


                           REVERING REDUNDANCY

                 IF YOU CARE, MAKE BACKUP COPIES. IF YOU CARE A
                          LOT, MAKE PLENTY OF 'EM
               WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR
                    A COMPLETE, RECENT BACKUP SET OF YOUR DATA.


                    Article submitted by: Gloria Short
                        Brain Storm Learning - BBS
                            A RoboFX GUI board!
                        Houston, Texas 713-550-8105
                       Compuserve I.D. # 73773.1116
                     America On Line: glorias@aol.com


    HARD DISK drives are very reliable, at least when compared
with other components of a computer system. Manufacturers measure
the ''mean time between failure'' - the principal judge of
reliability - in tens of thousands of hours, which translates
into 10 to 20 years of constant, round-the-clock use.
In theory, then, the hard disk drive in your new computer will
still be running smoothly well into the next millennium. Why,
then, are hard disk warranties typically 90 days?

    Some people are convinced it's because hard disks are
programmed in the factory to fail just after you have finished an
important project and just before you realize that it has been
too long since you made a full backup.

     Nearly everyone has a horror story about lost data, theirs
or someone else's.  A friend in Texas was shocked to discover
that thieves had stolen his computer but horrified when he saw
that they had taken his backup diskettes as well, even though
they were in a cabinet in an adjoining room.
    
     A friend in Iowa conscientiously made two sets of backup
diskettes each Friday afternoon and, feeling remarkably clever,
left one at the office and took one set home with him.

     That way, he reasoned, a fire at the office would not destroy
both sets of backup data. Sure enough, the floods last summer
found both sets and destroyed them.  Even without a grand
calamity, the loss of data can be overwhelming. That's where
backup software comes in. When the chips are down there is no
substitute for a complete, recent backup set of your data. And
complete backups do not have to be performed all the time; one
can save time by making an incremental backup of just the files
that have changed since the last time a backup was made.

    The easiest way to make a backup set is touse high-density
diskettes with the MSBACKUP backup utility that is built into
MS-DOS 6.0 and newer versions. It is much better and faster than
the old BACKUP command used in earlier versions of DOS, but it
does lack some of the advanced features found in backup software
packages that are sold separately.

    For example, MSBACKUP cannot automatically awaken itself at 3
a.m. to make a full backup onto a quarter-inch cassette drive
while you sleep. Other programs can.  Macintosh users have even
less to work with in terms of built-in backup software, making a
store-bought program even more important.

    There are many good backup programs on the market, including the
Norton Backup, Fastback and PC Tools for DOS and Windows *computers*
(Central Point Software), and Retrospect (Dantz Development Corp.), 
Mac Tools (Central Point Software) and Fastback for the Macintosh 
(Fifth Generation Systems).

    All are designed to reduce the backup process to just a few
mouse clicks. Most allow backing up to a specialized hardware
device, including tape drives and cartridges.  That's important,
because today's high-density diskettes have a capacity of 1.44
megabytes. (The newer 2.88-megabyte diskettes are still rare.) 
Even with data compression, it takes a tall stack of
1.44-megabyte floppies to make a complete backup of a
200-megabyte hard disk. Worse, one has to feed the diskettes to
the computer one at a time.  Alternatives abound. Cartridge drives, 
tape drives, ''floptical'' drives and redundant hard drives are 
increasingly popular ways to cope with the growing capacity and 
importance of your hard disk.

    Wouldn't it be great if all *computers* came with a tape drive?
A tape drive, of which the most popular forms are quarter-inch
cassette (QIC) and DAT cassettes, makes it more convenient to
perform regular backups.

    By choosing a tape drive with a capacity equivalent to or greater
than the capacity of the hard disk itself, one can start the
backup software, load an inexpensive blank cassette, and go to
lunch or dinner.

    Even so, ''almost zero'' new*computers*come with built-in tape
drives, said Bill Frank, president of Augur Visions Inc., a
personal computer industry research company in Los Altos. Most
are added after the sale. Frank has an explanation.

    ''Think about it,'' Frank said. ''Why do you buy a tape drive?
Because you expect the system to fail. When you're trying to sell
a new computer, that's the worst time to sell a tape drive.''
Customers are as reluctant to buy as manufacturers are to sell.
Tape drives are similar to life insurance in that you hope you
never need it and resent the premiums - until you need the
coverage. Quarter-inch tape cartridges come with different
capacities, and some can store several gigabytes of data. The
ones that fit into the standard 3.5-inch drive bay of most
personal *computers*, however, use minicartridges that store 40,
80, 120 or even 250 megabytes of data on a single tape.

     That makes sense for*computers*that have 250 to 5,000
megabytes of data.
Another popular option is a removable cartridge drive; the most
popular brands are Syquest from Syquest Technology Inc. and
Bernoulli from Iomega Corp. Unlike tape cassette drives, which
are far too slow to be used for anything but backup, removable
cartridges are quick enough to be used as hard disk replacements. 
The advantage is that one drive can be given virtually unlimited
capacity, simply by adding more cartridges. These cartridges,
larger than tape cassettes, typically hold 40, 80 megabytes or
105 megabytes and cost $50 to $75 each.  Users often treat the
cartridges as separate hard disks, using one for Photoshop files,
for example, or one for desktop publishing files. At night, just
pop the cartridge out of the drive and lock it in the vault or
take it home.  The best use of a Bernoulli or Syquest drive is in
archiving data: saving important old but rarely used files on
removable disks. When the data are needed, just pop in the disk.

    Someday, not too long from now, we will probably be able to
squirt the contents of our hard disks over cable or telephone
wires each night to the equivalent of electronic safe-deposit
boxes. Until then, get used to either living dangerously,
flipping floppies or adding a QIC tape drive, a DAT drive or a
removable cartridge.

