Don't Backup Your Computer |
Backup Your Work!That's right, backup your work. How often? Whenever you have invested enough of your time in the work that you cannot afford to lose it. this could be hours, days or weeks. It is a judgment call.I recommend two levels of backups. First are the real-time backups which are done on a regular basis and the second are the milestone backups which are done according the stages of your project. If there are no milestones in your work, then try quarterly. The media for backups can vary from floppy discs, through Zip discs to CD's, etc. The backup media just need enough memory to hold the work directory. Yes, backup the work directory, not by work files. Two discs are needed per project and they are alternated. In a quarter of a century, this schema has not failed me. Alternative procedures are available but I know of none that are simpler and more reliable than the one just described. Some alternatives are destructive and will increase failures. One of the worst is having a second hard drive in your computer on which your work is backed-uped as you work. This can make sense only to a person who does not understand what is going on inside the computer. Typically, thirty (30 or more programs are running in the background of a home computer. Actually, only one program can run a one time, it only "appears" that the multiple programs are running at the same time. The reality is that the programs are "time-sliced" in a daisy chain operation through software interrupts. There are two types of interrupts in computers: 1) software and 2) hardware. The software interrupts are created from inside of and controlled by the software. But the hardware interrupts come from outside of the software at indeterminate times and can pile up on each other and at times can overwhelm the software. Disc drives create hardware interrupts. The second serious problem with disc drives is that they are mechanical, guaranteed to wear out and crash! Why would one want to add problems while trying to solve problems. In closing, backup your work -- not your computer. [top]
|