cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (07/12/90)
sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) writes: }stewartw@cognos.UUCP (Stewart Winter) writes: }>Backups are just that ... backups. If your using them regularily, then }>they aren't a backup (certainly not in the sense intended by the law). }Backup are the ones to be used, not the Original. You make a backup, and }put away the original for safe keeping. If the backup gets destroyed you }take out the original and make another backup. }A better word than backup would be 'duplicate', I guess. }And as far as the law goes, I can make a backup and I can use the backup }or the original, whichever I want. But using the original is not a bright idea. Why is that? Why not just use the original, and use the backup as a backup. If the original fails, you have two recourses depending on the nature of the program: a) you can do a 'restore' from the backup onto the original disk, and start using it again, or b) you can starting using the backup disk and return the original to the manufacturer for replacement. But those are essentially the same recourses you have if you run off the backup, except that instead of having your backbup be freshly written on a disk of YOUR choice, with YOUR drive, all things to maiximize that it'll be readable two years from now when you might need it, you choose to have your backup be a disk of unknown parentage, written on a drive of unknown long term compatibilitily with yours, written an unknown amount of time ago, and having received unknown handling since then. You DONT KNOW how marginal the original disk is. You *know* (or can ensure) that the backup is as good as you want it, or need it, to be. I don't see what the downside of using the original is. In my case, I generally make TWO backups, which I store in different places so that I have maximal chance that when I need them at least one of the two will be good [or at the least, they won't have troubles in the SAME disk block, so between the two I can reconstruct a complete disk]. I never use them for anything, other than keeping squirreled away in case the original disk buys it (in fact, when I needed one recently it was a bit of an adventure figuring out where I had tucked it away for safekeeping). Am I missing something? /Bernie\
sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) (07/14/90)
nfs1675@dsacg3.dsac.dla.mil ( Michael S Figg) writes: |In article <2524@corpane.UUCP>, sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) writes: |> Backup are the ones to be used, not the Original. You make a backup, and |> put away the original for safe keeping. |I don't think you really mean 'backup' here. A backup as defined by Webster is |"a reserve or substitute". So effectively the original would be the backup and |what you are calling a backup would actually be a working copy. Well, if you read a bit further on you would have noticed I said: |> A better word than backup would be 'duplicate', I guess. Some people are just SOooooo picky. :-| -- John Sparks | | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 2400bps. sparks@corpane.UUCP | | PH: (502) 968-DISK A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of. - Ogden Nash