“And in the field? What backup technique, then?”
Well, you’re often stuck with slow, tape-style storage. And mini-disk drives may be expensive and take up room if they’re not already in your portable.
But why not see if your company will let you send valuable reports over the phone for temporary storage in its big computer? You can also stash them away inside a desktop computer hooked up to the portable the same way. And there’s yet another answer. Rent electronic storage space on a commercial computer network like The Source of CompuServe.
In the future, maybe computer memories—on little portables and desktops alike—won’t be so temperamental. Perhaps there will be superreliable CMOS RAMs. Or how about practical, low-cost disks that you use lasers to “read” and “write” on? Dreams, dreams!
Meanwhile, most of us struggle along with floppies and must keep thinking, Backup! Handle carefully! Clean! Maintain! and How often? In summary, keep asking yourself:
1. How much time or money does it take to enter your data or set up your computer equipment?
2. How easily could you duplicate or replace it?
3. How much time or money do you have for copying, cleaning, maintenance, whatever precaution you’re taking?
Do keep data security in perspective. Remember, even if you must be a zealot at times, it’s just part of surviving with your computer. Harold Joseph Highland, a data-security stalwart in his work—a believer in two backup disks of book manuscripts—tells of people who make out very well with far less copying. They are students at the University of Minnesota, computer-science majors, and they trudge through snow and ice carrying unbacked-up floppies in their books. Their professors are tolerant. If a disk fails and a student’s assignment is late, they understand. The students can’t afford too many floppies, and some just don’t have the time for backups. It’s the same, perhaps, at countless other colleges, and maybe that’s only right for twenty-year-olds who’ll learn soon enough about disappointments beyond the campus.
But you’re in business, perhaps, without a friendly professor ready with a sympathetic nod. Your making regular backups is just plain good sense, and if you don’t, you deserve what’s coming to you.