Transfers

Here's the official announcement from FamilyTreeDNA. If a number of you want to club together to chain together your transfers and get a free unlock, post a comment against this post.

Dear Valued Customer, Family Tree DNA is now allowing people that have taken an AncestryDNA™ or 23andMe© (V3) test to transfer their raw data to the Family Finder database for FREE by visiting www.familytreedna.com/AutosomalTransfer! That’s right!  Pass this news along to your friends and family members that have tested with Ancestry.com or 23andMe so they can discover new matches in the world’s largest genetic genealogy database for FREE!   Note: Autosomal raw data cannot be transferred to an account that already has Family Finder What’s in it for You? After transferring, you’ll get your top 20 matches, complete with their surnames and relationship predictions.  You don’t have to do anything after uploading your data to see these matches.  You’ve got nothing to lose! You can unlock ALL of your matches and myOrigins results for free by recruiting 4 other relatives or friends to transfer their results using a link we’ll provide!

Unlock Right Away for Just $39 If you do not want to wait for 4 others to transfer, we are also permanently reducing the price to unlock all of your matches and myOrigins results to just $39!   Once a transfer has purchased or referred 4 others they will unlock the full Family Finder experience! How Does it Work? New customers must enter their name and email address to get started.  If you already have an FTDNA account, just click Already have a Family Tree DNA account?

Next, click ‘Upload Raw Data’ to select and upload the raw data file from AncestryDNA™ or 23andMe© (V3) from your computer.  It is not necessary to unzip the file prior to uploading it.  If you don’t have your raw data file handy, instructions on how to download it will be available.

The first round of results processing will take about an hour and an email notification will be sent to the registered email address after we are done processing the raw data.

Free transfer of your autosomal dna to FamilyTreeDNA

Family Tree DNA recently announced an incentive system for transfers from ancestry and 23andme (v3 chip only, so only those who tested before about Dec 2013 can transfer from 23andme).

Here's Kitty Cooper's blog post about it
http://blog.kittycooper.com/2014/10/free-transfer-of-dna-data-from-ancestry-to-family-tree-dna/

Notes from the official announcement from FamilyTreeDNA to their volunteer group administrators (such as myself) are below.

This should be of particular interest to those who have only tested at Ancestry.com as they simply do NOT provide you with sufficient information to check which ancestor was responsible for your dna match.

A tree match is just a simple pointer on where to do the traditional research to show the linkage indicated. It is not necessarily where your dna match is.

To find who passed on a particular segment of dna to you and your match(es), you need to find which spot on which chromosome you share with others and work together to then determine if it is a triangulated match, ie person A matches both person B and person C on chromosome n from point x to point y AND person B matches person C at the same spot.
Until you have checked that person B also matches person C, you don't yet know if your matches are from the opposite sides of your pair of chromosome n, or the same side, which can still be from either of your paternal or maternal ancestry until you have more clues.

Once you have checked however, you do now know that a common ancestor between you all is responsible for passing that particular bit of dna that has survived down the generations to you. You may be pleasantly surprised to find completely different tree linkages!

Ancestry does not provide the tools necessary to do this.
FamilyTreeDNA does, as do 23andme, and of course, GEDMatch.com who accept raw data files from all three companies for comparisons.

So, if you are interested in maximising your investment in your dna test with Ancestry in particular, do consider this transfer.
Club together to get the referrals working for you.

If you have a surname from any of the DNA projects listed on the top rhs of this blog do consider joining your appropriate project after you have transferred your data. They aren't just for Y-dna, we accept all clues for the ancestry of the surname and their connections, which autosomal dna certainly provides, albeit less directly than y- or mt-DNA.
If you are one of my relations, or already know you are a dna match to myself or one of my close relations, please also consider joining my autosomal dna project FFLornaHen so that we can work together to explore our genetic heritage and break down some of those brick walls.

From the FamilyTree DNA announcement to Group Administrators:

.. for the first time ever, people that have taken an AncestryDNA™ or 23andMe© (V3) test can transfer into the FTDNA databases for free by visiting https://www.familytreedna.com/AutosomalTransfer? and following the instructions to upload their raw data file.

 

Within an hour or two, we provide a preview of what’s waiting if they transfer by showing the top 20 matches along with an estimate of the total number of matches in the FTDNA database.

Full functionality can be unlocked by either paying $39 or recruiting four other people to upload, thus unlocking the rest of the matches.

 

Here are some important points to know:

 

1. As of Friday afternoon, Ancestry was experiencing difficulty with file downloads. ... If you (or your group members) have previously uploaded files to GEDmatch, there’s a fair chance the download will still be on your computer. Look for a filename like dna-data-yyyy-mm-dd.zip.

 

2. We only accept the 23andMe V3 chip that was used on tests sold between November 2010 and approximately November 2013. There are a couple of ways to find out what chip was used for your test other than simply the timeframe. One is size; v3 chip files are about 7.83 MB where V2 and V4 chips are smaller. If you’re tech savvy, you can unzip the file and check chromosomes: Chromosome 1 for v3 starts at 82154 (rs4477212) where v4 starts at 734462 (rs12564807)and v2 starts with position 742429 (rs3094315).

 

3. We do not have any plans to accept V2 or V4 chips. if you try to upload the wrong chip version, the system will tell you that the file doesn’t have sufficient data. Since neither chip contains enough of the SNPs included in Family Finder, we would have to impute too much data. Basically we’d have to make assumptions about the missing SNPs that we’re just not willing to make at this point.  

 

More on Ancestry atDNA

Yes, I've been spending a little more time on my thousands of AncestryDNA matches lately even though many, the majority of them by some accounts, will turn out to be false positives.

Yes, I do sometimes wonder if the money spent (and hoops you have to jump through to get a test when you live outwith USA) has been worth the effort you have to expend to see if the leafy hints to genealogy may be new genetic, as well as papertrail, relatives that will get me through my brick walls.

Yes, I've found some new papertrail relations, but conventional research could have got me there eventually without the DNA test.

I've recently reminded myself of Shannon Christmas' useful blogpost on getting the most out of your Ancestry results.

To all of my Ancestry DNA matches who may search as far as here on my sites, I particularly draw your attention to this wonderful comic (linked to on Shannon's blog) which explains better than I, on why I keep suggesting that you upload your raw data from Ancestry to GEDMatch.

There's a whole world out there that doesn't necessarily believe we should trust what we are told by Ancestry without the evidence to back it up.

Let's use the great tools available to us and work together to break down those brick walls.

Do also use their newly introduced Share results feature.
It is a step on the way to more useful tools in that it allows you to see whether one of your matches, also matches someone you are sharing with - NOT that you know you all share the same common ancestor without exploring further at the chromosome comparison level.
Here's Angie Bush's blogpost about sharing your results on Kitty Cooper's blog
and an explanation of Triangulation - which is not the same as In Common With - from Roberta Estes blog

Y-DNA discounted until 3 Sep 2014

This just in from FamilyTree DNA.
A good time to upgrade to Y-DNA67...

Dear Valued Customer, We hope you've had a great summer!  As the season draws to a close, join us for one last celebration with our End of Summer Y-DNA Sale! Order a Y-DNA Test and join the world's largest Y-DNA database. All Y-DNA tests and upgrades have been marked down for significant savings!  Time is limited. Order now because the sale ends on 9/3/2014.   As an added bonus, Big Y is also on sale for $495*. Big Y is the most comprehensive Y chromosome discovery test on the market. With Big Y, 340,000 years of Y-DNA ancestry is just a test away!

Standard Tests Regular Price Sale Price Y-37 $169 $129 Y-67 $268 $199 Y-111 $367 $279 Big Y $595 $495 Upgrades Regular Price Sale Price Y-12 -> Y-37 $99 $70 Y-12 -> Y-67 $189 $148 Y-12 -> Y-111 $339 $239 Y-25 -> Y-37 $49 $35 Y-25 -> Y-67 $148 $114 Y-25 -> Y-111 $249 $209 Y-37 -> Y-67 $99 $79 Y-37 -> Y-111 $220 $179 Y-67 -> Y-111 $129 $109

* Note: Only previously awarded Big Y coupons are usable with sale items.  Other offers and coupons are not valid with Y-DNA sale prices.

Ancestry DNA - lack of chromosome browser

Please support this petition to get ancestry to provide a chromosome browser with their autosomal dna tests:
http://www.change.org/petitions/ancestry-com-dna-llc-give-ancestrydna-customers-dna-segment-data-a-chromosome-browser-now
Without the specifics of how well, where (which chromosome) our matches match us, and who else matches them, the money spent on a dna test on ancestry is just an expensive way to find hints to others' trees with no evidence whatsoever.
We shouldn't have to rely on (excellent) third party tools such as those at GEDMatch to get access to the useful parts of what we've paid for.

Henderson DNA

Those interested in the (very small) subset of the overall HENDERSON DNA that belongs to the family of Archibald & Margaret (McEWAN) HENDERSON, can check out the addition to the HENDERSON Lineages pages of an autosomal dna (atDNA) section.

(Remember to check specific surname project diaries in the links to the right for their progress.)

FTDNA postage changes

From FamilyTree DNA to group administrators:

 

".. As of Monday, we'll begin including domestic return postage in the cost of shipping and handling. ...  For both domestic and international shipping, the fee will now be a consistent $9.95."