5 Nov
2010
5 Nov
'10
10:44 a.m.
I have personally never had a hard drive fail on me at home, but a few have
failed at work. Where I work we don't deal with any of the IT hardware or
software, that is the responsibility of an external company.
I do keep the installer file from software I have installed (and make sure
they don't require files stored online which may vanish at a later date) and
backup all my files regularly.
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: "Terry Stewart" <terry at webweavers.co.nz>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2010 9:19 PM
Subject: Backups in the modern world
I am seriosulyt worried by the fact that a group of programmers who are
capable of writing a compiler didn't realise the value of backups. I
can't beklieve tht nobody had ever lost data before.
-tony
Given the high reliability of most hard drives these
days, I do wonder if
many people have forgotten that this technology can occasionally fail. At
work here (Not an IT environment), I have an automatic backup which runs
every day. A lot of my collegues don't have such a safeguard though.
Some
younger ones have never experienced a hard disk
failure so don't even
consider they might happen. The irony is that with nearly all work
environments using computers so extensively with less "hard copy" being
kept
data loss can be catastrophic!
I wonder how many home-based computers back up regularly? Again, I know
lots of people that don't citing reasons that it's just too hard to set
up,
they have to buy extra hardware etc. Some of the
address books, pictures
and home movies on those machines might be irreplaceable though.
Although it's a lot rarer than it used to be technology still fails. In
my
working life, I've had about three catastophic HD
failures. In each case,
the existance on a "day before" backup mean it was an annoyance rather
than
a disaster! The latest was only two years ago.
Anyway, I'm sure I'm preaching to the converted. (-:
Terry Stewart (Tezza)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 9:30 AM
Subject: Re: Fragility in the floppy world (was Re: TRS-80 Model II
Manuals)
>>
>> On 2 Nov 2010 at 17:25, Ethan Dicks wrote:
>>
>> > That's the tried-and-true way of reading a diskette that's had
Coke
>> > spilled on it. After the world switched to 3.5" floppies, doing
these
sorts of
things (mostly) faded into the mists.
Years ago, my little group using an Intel MDS-800 finished up a
compiler project way ahead of schedule. Management was so impressed
that they had T-shirts printed up and threw us a party, complete with
(really cheap) champagne. (I still have the T-shirt, but it doesn't
fit me anymore.)
We had the source code 8" floppies on a little shrine sort of display
so better to appreciate what we'd done. And no, we didn't have a
master backup of the thing, although we might have been able to
recreate it with bits from various people's private copies.