-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Carlos E. R. wrote: > > The Sunday 2007-05-27 at 07:53 -0700, Randall R Schulz wrote: > >>> That's not completely true... old Vax VMS file names had also a >>> version number. You could have "file.ext;1", "...;2", etc, so you >>> could go back and retrieve an older version of the file you were >>> working with. Nice feature, except if the admin had limited the >>> number of versions to two or three... which my teacher did. >> And there's a even a very limited counterpart in the Gnu tools: The "cp" >> command's --backup and related options. > >> You can also set up rdiff-backup to periodically make incremental >> snapshots of select portions of your file system. > >> But of course, a real backup and archive system is an important >> ingredient in any data safety setup. > > Absolutely. > > But you might work all day on a report, and on a stupid moment obliterate > it all. We all do such things some times... Or after long work, you decide > your last hour has been full of errors and it would be better to go back > in time. If the software is designed to save a version history of the > file, it might save our day on both cases. > >
Ummm... I rather remember a variant of MS Word which incorporated not only the current document but all changes to that document by default. Document sizes suddenly rocketed, and subsequent document corruption due to media limits being hit became a major issue. Also editing became more and more difficult and slow as the document size increased. The response was to turn this feature off. Backup does give some data security but one also needs to be able to handle the situation where one gets a gradual corruption of data. (A couple of early viruses only made small changes to data over time, by the time the infection had been detected the integrity of the backup sets was at best suspect). This also the case with a failing hard drive, or drive support hardware. The only solution I can see is the use of external media sets. While commercial outfits can afford the hardware and personnel to make differential systems work well with external media and more sophisticated strategies, there is not really anything reliable and easy to use for home users in this category. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGW/daasN0sSnLmgIRAkDXAKDR5hUPtf6/BYc+j+wnEJVokFnHSgCeKjBG o0Cf6hQUf/ShmH2vPTkGy9o= =5A7K -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
