David W. Fenton wrote:
Thanks for the explanation of the executive undelete system. However,
the biggest drawback I see to my using it, is this. I recently found
myself in the circumstance of having to replace failed hardware, on a
_verrrrry_ old system (P1, 100mhz). When I discovered that the purchase
price of the replacement parts for the hardware was more expensive than
the price of an entirely new system, I elected to purchase the new
system, which is WIN XP, a NTFS based file system. I have ported all of
my notation activities over to this system, and maintained my earlier
work habits, of the first activity when starting a new session is to
create a new, uniquely named file into which the work I do today will be
saved. My previous file remains intact, and since saves do not get
saved to yesterday's file, that file will be corrupted only by
extraordinary circumstances. Further, my protocols are robust and
relatively independent of changes in hardware and software environments;
and they work equally well under DOS, WIN9x, WIN XP, Linux, and MAC OS.
They also don't cost anything to purchase, and I don't need to purchase
an upgrade or multiple versions for multiple platforms.
And I don't have to worry about saving my Finale files (or any other
files) under various names. I don't have to think about it at all --
it just happens in the background, and the data is available for me
if I should ever need it.
I don't "worry about saving my files"; it's just a standard part of my
work practice. And it's an extension of my normal work practices. If
I'm going to write a letter, I pull up the letterhead template file.
Now, that file has the "read only" atrribute set, so I have to type in a
new name to save the document I create from the template anyway. It's
just become a habit to save it as soon as I open it. Same way with
Finale; if I'm going to do a part song in close score, I pull up a
template, in which the "read only" attribute is set, and it's just habit
to immediately save it under the name of the file to which I am going to
be working.
2. The extra files take up lots of disk space, whereas the deleted
files take up no disk space at all.
'Splain this, please. If the executive undelete program you advocate
protects the deleted sectors so that they cannot be overwritten, and
will be available in the future, how is it that the files take up no
disk space? <toungue in cheek mode on> Do you realize that this is the
golden fleece of data warehousing--how to put an unlimited amout of data
into a limited space? And they're selling this software at such a low
price? <tongue in cheek mode offf>.
3. I have available to me versions of the files in addition to the
files whose names I manually incremented, including every save during
a working session (not just the file as it stood at the end of the
session).
I don't really need _all_ of the versions of the all the files. Two
copies of the final version of each day's work, (one each on each of two
separate physical drives), plus two copies, plus the asv and back up
file haved proved adequate for my use. If I understand your description
of the executive undelete correctly, then besides my intentional saves,
each copy of the ~.asv, ~.bak for each file would be saved, too. Does
this mean, since I might have 30 versions of a score, each in a separate
finale file, executive undelete would save the each of the ten ~.asv
files which get made for each one? I concur that redundancy is often
beneficial, but this seems overkill.
And it works for *all* my programs, not just for Finale.
Good work protocols do, too.
BUT IT IS AUTOMATIC -- it requires no thought on my part, so if I am
asleep at the switch, I don't pay any price for my own mistakes
(except for the time it takes to undelete the files from before my
mistake).
I guess I just need to be in control too much for _AUTOMATIC_ to be a
selling point with me. I choose to drive a vehicle with a manual
transmission, and while I have autosave set to operate, if I had my
'druthers, instead of autosave I'd have a message "this file has been
changed since it was last saved _x_ minutes ago", instead, giving me
the choice of whether or not I wanted to save I file. Another reason I
don't like too many things automatic is because I find (at least, in me)
that they encourage laziness and negligence. If some software program
makes it _too_ easy to recover from negligence, it reduces the
motivation for me to be careful, and deliberate. The same
considerations inform my choice of whether to use Finale's set-up
wizard, or a template for a particular task; I probably use the set-up
wizard only about 20 percent of the time, preferring to work from
templates.
Does
And one of my faults (if that's what it is) is that my attitudes and
behaviors are more fundamentally informed by the aphorism, "A an ounce
of prevention is better than a gallon of cure."
mean you are big on preventive medicine and therefore don't
have health insurance?
Yes it means I am big on preventive medicine; and no it doesn't mean I
don't have health insurance. But I think that it is better, in
principle, to spend more time and effort to prevent errors, than to try
to recover from them after they occur.
ns
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