Re: Backup

[yesss@xxxxxxxx]

≪ Even worse than tape, of course, is a 'removable hard
drive cartridge' such as Jaz. Avoid at all costs! ≫
				--Bill Troop 

Uh-oh! What should I know that I don't, Bill? For
the past 10 years I've been directing data and
copies of configuration files to scsi external
hard drive cartridges and have regarded built-in
hard drives strictly as the home of OSes and apps.

Granted, these days I waste a lot of storage space
that way. But PCs come and PCs go, apps come and
apps go. I can and do use my cartridge drive with
any scsi PC. If, like me, Norman Bauman used a unix
email client on our ISP's server and didn't decode
attachments in downloaded email, he too could yawn
at most viral epidemics. Although I do copy some data
files to PC hdd for what I regard as unreliable backup,
backing up a whole PC hdd never crosses my mind.

≪ These removable cartridges are not at all
the same thing as an external HD. ≫

Hmmm ... what are they? PCs and scsi adapters see
my Castlewood Orb drive's 2.2gb carts as hard drives
and so do I. The same applies to Syquest cartridges.
PCs used to and still may treat Iomega disks as
floppies, but--having watched an otherwise PC-savvy
friend struggle since the '80s with one Iomega lemon
after another and evasive Iomega support--I've never
owned an Iomega product and never expect to. I was
dismayed to see Mac users gleefully embrace Iomega
and ditch Syquest.

Mindful of the industry downturn and Syquest's fate
(almost as sad as XyQuest's, but the Dave Erickson
of Syquest founded Castlewood), I recently bought
an insurance Orb drive that will sit on a shelf
till the unhappy day when I may need it. A pleasant
surprise: Orb drives now are scsi+usb. Come to think
of it, I could daisychain it to my first Orb and use
it for data as well as hardware backup. But data
backup is what prudent people do. ... Ciao. 	--a

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