3. Every day make your backup floppy. You might forget about the scratch disk and make two copies.
What about working with hard disks? Well, Winchesters are more dependable than floppies. On the other hand, they commonly store many times more material than do the soft disks—meaning perhaps a fiftyfold increase in your agony if one fails.
“Always try to use an uninterruptible power supply with your Winchester,” warns Fitzgerald, whose former company produces hard disks as well as floppies. Some manufacturers say their hard disks don’t need this protection. But, in general, it’s a good idea; here’s why.
Normally, the head picking up the magnetic patterns is only ten or twenty thousandths of an inch from the oxide-coated disk. The disk is aluminum—and shear-prone in the event of a crash. Instead of the typical soft whirl, you’ll hear an ear-piercing squeal like a car brake out of adjustment, except that the aftermath will be more costly. Repairs may run into the hundreds of dollars, not to mention the loss of data.
Not every power failure will produce a disk crash. But why gamble with your Winchester and its data?
An uninterruptible power supply will protect them by pumping out juice long enough for you to know something is amiss and shut the disk down. It sells for several hundred dollars, commonly, and is normally worth it.
“Also,” says Fitzgerald, “be sure the drive is grounded and shielded as the manufacturer recommends. If not, power surges could cause it to lose track of its data.”
He suggests one more precaution. Since the disk and the head are so close, why not warn furniture bangers? This could change. Hard disks are shock mounted in some portables nowadays, so that the equipment isn’t quite that delicate. But I’d still try not to be too klutzy around it—and to be careful in other respects.
You can back up a Winchester in one of several ways:
1. Dumping to floppies. It’s cheap but slow. Then again, you can speed up the process by updating only the files you’ve been working on. You just “write” over them.