On 04/29/01 1:45 PM EDT (-4 hrs UTC), "Michael W. Wellman"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Separating the OS, the apps, and the data, it greatly simplifies the speed
> of backup and restoration *while* minimizing what information is impacted in
> the result of a disaster.
> With the apps on a partition of their own, you only truly *need* to backup
> that partition when you actually install new apps (although some work is
> necessary to ensure that the apps aren't "cleverly" keeping data within
> their own hierarchy). And daily incremental backups are incredibly fast.
I agree that the less you have to back up, and the less data the backup
application has to glean through, the faster will be the backup. That's a
no-brainer.
And certainly the backup process is simplified when fewer volumes and
partitions have to be backed up.
But the speed of any given backup is irrelevant when it can be performed
automatically at a convenient time of the day -- in the middle of the night,
say. Do you really care how long your backup takes when it's performed while
you're asleep?
> I disagree with this posit as I, as a longtime Macintosh developer, find
> that most crashes are caused by poorly written code that makes the mistaken
> assumption that it doesn't have to check the error condition or every single
> call. Although I will agree that these crashes are often manifested as
> "conflicts".
I won't quibble with you. I'm not a developer and have little actual
knowledge of what goes on under the hood. But aren't we really saying the
same thing? Badly written code is what causes two or more applications to
conflict with one another, no? In any case...
>You left off actually restoring things at least once a week (okay, minimally
>once a month) to ensure that the data can still be read. Nothing more
>annoying that slow failure of a backup device.
If by that you mean a regular schedule of desktop rebuilds and disk
optimization, I agree. An "expert" once suggested to me that frequently
rebuilding the desktop was a wise course to follow and, when I remember, I
do it it once a week or so. I've also been told that it's a good idea to
rebuild the desktop after the installation of a new application or even an
update or upgrade to an old tried-and-true application.
But nowadays, when so many manufacturers (including Apple, alas) are in such
a hurry to get their software to market, far too many buggy apps are being
inflicted upon the end-user. No amount of desktop rebuilding is going to
solve that problem.
If airplanes in the early days of aviation crashed as often as computers
crash today (and I know they crashed a lot!), we'd still be flying kites.
--
/Ed
_____________________________
Edward B. Hanna
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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