To back up my email files, I drag my entire collection of Eudora Folders to the backup disk, which is somewhat inefficient space-utilization wise, but quick, simple, and relatively foolproof. When I do a backup, I sort the folder list view by Date Modified, which allows me to easily check what files have been created since the date of the last backup, and I just group select the new additions and drag them to the backup disk. I just keep a set of backup folders on Zip disks (in the old days I used to use floppies) with the same names as corresponding folders on my hard drive. Personally, I find that my ultra-manual backup “system” works for me – so long as I get around to doing it. Todd found that TechTool Pro was able to recover, somewhat laboriously, a fair bit of his lost data, but far from all of it. However, one work-in-progress had eluded the last backup – and he lost six weeks of Quicken entries and many weeks worth of email archives. Todd was relatively lucky in that some of the work he’d produced since his last backup had been sent to publishers on disk or been copied to another machine. The hard drive had to be reformatted, which of course erased any all his data. Repeated attempts to repair the disk with Disk First Aid, Norton Disk Doctor, and MicroMat TechTool Pro over a period of two days ended in failure. In Todd’s case, a seemingly routine system freeze corrupted the boot sector of the hard drive on his PowerBook G3 (original “3500” model). What got me ruminating about the backup issue was Todd Stauffer, The Upgrade Guy’s, latest column on MacCentral, which proves that catastrophic data loss can happen to anybody – even the guy who wrote the Mac Upgrade and Repair Bible. Of course, there are plenty of other ways to lose data, such as the time accidentally I threw my documents folder in the trash, and emptied it (don’t ask). In eight years as a Mac user, I’ve never experienced any data loss due to hardware failure, and indeed have never had any hard drive problems at all, but anything mechanical can fail (and inevitably will fail eventually), so someday the law of averages will no doubt catch up with me. Sooner or later, I will probably get burned. It’s just a matter of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, and there always seems to be something more urgent to do than hooking the PowerBook up to the Zip drive and going through the routine of dragging my files manually to the backup Zip disks. Theoretically, one should do it at least once a week. 1999 – I don’t back up my files nearly often enough.
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