Saving and storing records

Like many of you I wish I had known back then what I know now abt saving and citing records.. I am learning from my mistakes and only making new mistakes!

My husband had repeatedly told me to back my files up in a place other than my laptop but I didn't listen so when I turned off my virus scanner and got a worm that wiped out everthing I had entered in the last 6 months I was very depressed.. I had my records from previously backing up 6 months before on a different computer. I lost photo's that I'd taken 2 years collecting from relatives on visits to California and I lost almost 5,000 names. Luckily I did still have the film records so it's been a matter of re-entering them for the past 6 months, a very hard task since I'm not sure what I entered during that time making going over the film notes one by one..

I'm trying to focus on Jerez Zacatecas but the ancestors from Zapotlan El Grande and Tamazula Jalisco keep pulling me in that direction, in fact that's where I started my research on my mothers family. I"m finding so many errors I guess I was meant to go back and clean up the records, add citations and connect lines I didn't realize were related..

I hope sharing my mistakes and experiences will make some of the new members aware of some of the pitfalls of reclaming the ancestors..

Linda in Everett