Rich writes, <I do a newsletter that has been fried a few times by currupted files. This was on my old Amiga, not the Mac. But disk space these days is so cheap.>
Well, uh, on my budget, it isn't. This isn't to say it's IMPOSSIBLE for me to have an external backup system, but I've gotta watch the money and not waste a single byte of what I do have. <So why not keep a history of the project until it is out the door?> Computer wise, other than budget considerations and even if the disk space is cheap for you, why keep "old copies" of files, even important ones, when it's easy enough to simply keep fully updated backup copies alone? Plus, even cheap, when you spend repeatedly, it adds up. I mean, if your computer ate one of your important files, forcing you to resort to a backup what would you be doing, copying in the most recent backed up version, or using a copy you made days or weeks ago? There are some days when a day-old backup would be good enough for me anyway, but other times when a particular day's work is not only crucial, but especially lengthy, and if I lost it, I'd be very upset, because a day-old, or older, backup copy, would NOT restore the loss. But this does remind me of something I did used to do, non-computer wise, in that I kept what were, in a sense, "historical project backups." When I used to work as a microbiologist doing bacterial identifications, I used to subculture each microorganism after I'd run it through the ID process, in the event that I couldn't get an ID on the first run, and even though the overwhelming majority of the organisms I got for ID, say 90% of them, I WAS able to identify to species level in one day or, for those requiring longer incubations, on the first try. Reason for this: You can only run an 18-24 hour culture through this process (after setting the organisms up, most of the ones I got had to incubate overnight to show proper reactions, but there were a few that needed 48-72 hours). If you can name the bugs after their first run, great, but if you don't, then you have to repeat it, along with in many instances performing additional tests. And for THAT, you need another 18-24 hour culture, and your original one would be 36-48 hours by then -- unusable. And until I actually identified a particular organism, I'd make another subculture of it each day until I DID get an ID, so I'd always have a fresh one to work with if I needed it. Hence these "backups," although they were on petri dishes instead of floppy disks, Zip disks or CDs. ;-) And I didn't throw them (yes, them -- five different labs were giving me their IDs and I had anywhere from 50-200 new ones every week) into the biohazard trash until Friday afternoons, once I'd signed off on the week's reports. <Remember the early days of desktops where WordPerfect (with versions for PC, Amiga, ATari and even Mac) had timed backups? With half a meg of ram, we saw crashes often enough to that the powers for those backups.> Hmmm. I remember the EXISTENCE of those computers, and my friends back then had them, but I never owned any of them. I didn't actually buy myself a computer until I was able to afford a Mac. So I'm not intimate with how those other ones operated, or how they behaved in terms of frequency of crashing. The Mac Plus I was using on the job back then (1986-87) never crashed on me and although I had my daily backups, I never had to use them. (Hmmm, I wonder if THAT was why I fell in love with Macs and refused to buy a computer until I could afford to buy one!) <I've found it really intersting to talk to folks who keep hospital files in geographically disperse places. Talk about critical backups.> Yeah, really! :-O ~Yersinia. -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
