Ancestry/Genealogy

With my family and my husband's family, I've got over 20,000 people in my data base. I haven't counted the records or photos, but it's a lot and I'm not finished scanning stuff. I've got eight boxes of records, pictures and files from my MIL, and my Mom only lets me have a few things at a time to scan, but she's got boxes and boxes and files cabinets of records and pictures.

I ordered my parts through NewEgg.com and a local shop assembled it for me. I could have done it but had carpal tunnel surgery and arthroplasty in November and did not have full use of my thumb. And yeah, it was just over $1000. Then I added a 4 terrabyte hard drive to supplement the 3 terrabyte drive I moved over from my old computer.

Mostly I upgraded for scanning - the old computer just did not have the capability of handling large high resolution scans. I'd scan a picture or document, then couldn't save it because the computer "didn't have enough memory." It's lovely with the new computer, the scans are faster and saving the files.

My specs:
ASUS M5A99X motherboard
AMD FX-8320 Vishera 3.5GHz (4.0GHz Turbo) Eight-Core Desktop Processor
32 GB DDR3 1600 RAM
ASUS GT640-2GD3 GeForce GT 640 2GB Video Card (not really needed, but I wanted duo monitors)
Windows 7 Pro (Had to get Pro to support the 32 GB RAM)
Two 120 GC solid state drives, one for the OS and one for a PhotoShop scratch drive
And the hard drives I mentioned above. Oh, new case & power supply, new DVD burner.

Then I went and bought two monitors which makes scanning and editing images so much easier. And I found a 11" x 17" all in one printer/scanner so I can scan the oversized documents and scrapbooks. I'm now broke!

My summer vacation this year is scanning, editing, and burning to DVD!

For now, just to save your data in MyCanvas, you could "print" it in batches as PDFs, burn those files to DVD. Then download the documents and pictures and save those. I backup everything to DVD. When transitioning from one computer to another, I don't rely on moving a hard drive, I back it all up first. The more times and ways I can backup data, the better!

If you don't have a DVD burner, let me know - I have a perfectly good IDE one I can't use I could send you. I took it out of the old computer to put in the new one and the new one doesn't have that kind of connection.