u/The0sama

Hi everyone,
I’m facing a bit of a dilemma and would appreciate some advice from people with experience in Y-DNA research.
I’m part of a relatively rare Y-haplogroup branch. At the moment, my closest confirmed Big Y match shares a common ancestor with me estimated to be around 5,000 years ago, so my branch is still very poorly sampled.
However, I found a man who appears to belong to a downstream branch of my haplogroup. He has only tested at the Y-DNA 12-marker level, but all 12 markers match mine exactly (genetic distance 0).
What makes this even more interesting is that his paternal origins are from the same town that my grandfather’s family originally came from.
I have the opportunity to pay for a Big Y upgrade on his kit myself, but I’m trying to decide whether it’s worth the risk.
My main concerns are:
The sample is around 7–8 years old.
It has only been tested at Y-12, so I don’t know whether the stored DNA is still sufficient for Big Y.
If the sample fails due to insufficient DNA, I could end up losing a significant amount of money.
From a genetic genealogy perspective, would you consider this a worthwhile gamble?
Has anyone here upgraded an older Y-12 sample to Big Y, and how did it turn out?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Hey all,

Quick question for people who’ve dealt with older FamilyTreeDNA samples.

I have a Y-DNA sample that was only ever tested at the Y-12 level about 8 years ago and never upgraded. I’m considering upgrading it to Big Y, but I’m unsure about the success rate with older stored samples.

Has anyone here actually tried running Big Y on an old sample like this? How often does it fail due to low remaining DNA?

Also, if it does fail, what usually happens—refund, credit, or just a “sorry, no DNA left” situation?

Would really appreciate any real experiences or insights.

I’ve been trying to understand the practical differences between G25 and qpAdm, especially for West Asian / Middle Eastern ancestry modeling where populations are highly overlapping genetically.

For those with experience in ancient DNA modeling:

1. In your experience, is qpAdm genuinely more reliable than G25 for ancestry modeling when the model is built carefully (good sources + proper outgroups)?

2. What is the general opinion among advanced hobbyists or people familiar with population genetics regarding the qpAdm/AdmixLab system on Illustrative DNA?

I know it’s not the same as fully manual academic qpAdm workflows, but would you still consider it significantly better than standard G25 calculators if the references and outgroups are chosen correctly?

I’m especially interested in opinions from people who have actually worked with qpAdm, ADMIXTOOLS, or complex Middle Eastern models.