How many times have you heard a PC expert lecturing about the need for computer users to backup their data files? More than once, I hope. Rather than repeat that exercise, I would like to describe some real world problems where the lack of a proper backup cost the user real money. My business specializes in PC Data Recovery. I get the computers with NO backups and various hard disk failures. Embarrassment is only one of the emotions the particular user presents to us.
The recovery strategy was fairly straight forward. Luckily we were able to find an empty 10 megabyte partition and trick Fastback into restoring the current twelve diskettes of data. This left an erased file with all the available data. An un-erase utility was used to rescue the file. Home free, right? Well, not quite so fast. Unfortunately the hardware had been going "sour" for a while, so what we recovered was full of extraneous data. The effect is what I call "Swiss Cheese", that is, full of holes. Blocks of alien data were interspersed with the "real" data. Something like a part of a zip code index clobbering blocks of Name and Address data.
The dark side of this problem was that the user had to pay thousands of dollars to rekey the entire data base!!!
The computer was eventually transported to a data recovery company in Los Angeles. They thought their technicians might be able to find the missing data. After many weeks, and thousands of dollars, only half the data was rescued.
Daily backups are appropriate if your files are being updated every day. In this strategy you should save only those files changed since the last backup. If you batch all your changes for a once a month update, then a daily backup would be a waste of time. A single backup right after all the monthly changes have been entered would be best. This approach would preserve the work just completed. A single backup taken before any new changes assumes that the computer and its data will be intact since last months entry. Lots can happen in the interval.
I have seen too many users keep all their backup copies in a box right next to the computer. A burglar intent on stealing your computer would probably take all those nice diskettes as well. Thieves are not known to be nice people. A fire will melt the backup diskettes as well as the computer itself if they are next to each other. The moral of all this is to preserve your current backups away from the computer, in a locked environment, which is fire resistant. This decision is based on your worst fears.
Next is the question of periodic full backup copies which are stored elsewhere (off-site is the professional term). Our mainframe cousins take off-site backup quite seriously. Boxes of daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly tapes are routinely stored in a vault (or under a mountain). For these folks the term "disaster recovery" is a major concern. Imagine what would happen if "something" destroyed the computer at your local bank. ???
The moral of these stories is that if your computer data is worth your investment in time and personnel costs, then it is worth the cost of a few dollars in backup media. A hundred dollars with of diskettes or tapes could save you thousands of dollars of recovery, repair, or rekeying costs. If you need it, save it!
Author: Grey Staples, CDP, CCP President of Information Repair Service (now Camelback Systems), is a 25 (34) year veteran of the mainframe and micro markets. IRS, Inc. offers data recovery services for IBM Personal Computers and compatibles.
Version: August 14, 1997 Updated: 02-19-99 (9-5-2001 webstat)