Storage

Freeware:

Tips, Tricks and Commentary:

Backing up is almost always a waste of time.

Why?

1. The vast majority of backups will never be needed to restore anything.

2. A significant portion of the ones that are needed to restore something won't be able to.

Now, I hope that the only reason your backups are a waste of time is reason number 1, but I have seen too many people who have experienced reason number 2. If you are going to bother doing backups, make sure you can do a restore.

A company I know had been doing backups religiously for years. They were routinely swapping tapes in their NetWare server, where a consultant had set up SBACKUP.NLM to run automatically. The consultant had stopped supporting them for one reason or another, and when they needed to restore some important files, they asked me to assist them. When I got there, I examined the setup for SBackup and found that their original consultant had configured it to only backup the operating system directories. There were never any backups of their data!

Another company I know had set up their own backup system and had been using it for years, but when they needed to restore some inportant files, they called me. I found that they had only ever been backing up changed files. They had a drawer full of tapes, and they didn't know when the files they needed were last changed. I spent hours, with half the corporate staff hovering over me, searching every tape in the drawer for the files they needed. Some of the tapes had failed, and I never did find all the lost files.

If you're going to invest your time and effort in performing backups, make sure you can use them to do a restore. It's simple. Before a regularly scheduled backup, make a copy of a small subdirectory. After the backup has been performed, delete the copy and try to restore it from the backup to .

In addition, each tape should be able to stand on its own. The first backup on each tape should be a full backup! You can then append changed file backups onto the tape, and rotate your tapes periodically. As an example, schedule your backups so that, on Friday evening you do a full backup, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening you append a changed file backup onto the same tape, and eject the tape on Friday morning. Then place that tape in a secure location and insert another.

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CDs and DVDs

Why do software developers who publish vast amounts of information on CDs, require you to install software onto you hard disk when it could run just as well from the CD! And if it can't run directly from the CD, WHY NOT?!?!? Is 650 megabytes not enough for the data and the application?

I understand that, with the advent of CD-ROM technology, the old single and double speed drives made it painfully slow to run applications from the CD. Today, with the slowest CD-ROM drives at 40X, there is no reason not to run the applications from the CD. Games do it! Why not Applications?

MorningStar Principa Pro and Microsoft TechNet are some examples of CD-ROM periodicals, each of which provide a wealth of information, but with each issue, require you to install software onto your hard disk. The good news is that these products can be made to run directly from the CD if you do a little experimenting. The fact that this situation is witheld from you by the publisher, is assinine.

Publishers of CD-ROM products should make it not just possible, but simpler to run the application from the CD.

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CD and DVD Packaging

The tobacco industry has been packaging their products in celophane for decades. They clearly know how to do it. Couldn't the manufacturers of CD and DVD disks talk to some tobacco industry executives and maybe get a license on the technology so that they could do it right?

Opening a new jewel case is a frustrating process. If I can tear the celophane wrapper off a pack of cigarettes by pulling a little tab, why can't I do the same thing with a Jewel case? Where's the tab? Even if I find it, why does the tab tear off before the celophane wrapper?

Does the tobacco industry hold a patent on the technology and the software industry isn't willing to pay the license fees?

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