No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.
You crane your ear to hear the hard drive spinning but you can't tell if it's the drive or just the fan whining away.
Everybody's worst nightmare: a dead hard drive. No problem, just whip out your trusty Norton Disk Doctor floppy/cartridge and fix, right? At worst, reinitialize and restore from backup. Couple of hours wasted.
What Norton disk, you ask? What backups? Oh, you don't do backups? Join the crowd.
Everybody talks about backups, but an amazing number of people just fly naked, no parachute, over jagged mountaintops and into hurricanes, their data securely bagged in a gossamer film suspended by a thread of stout cottonwood.
Enough metaphors already.
Hard facts: The sun rises. Time passes. Hard disks die -- including yours.
Think about what's really happening for a second. All your data, all your work, is entrusted to a small, spinning platter(s) coated with magnetized rust particles. You normally don't think beyond icons: documents and folders, but if you really understand just what the mechanics are, you will understand why you should prepare for disaster.
Next is cartridges: usually Syquest, pretty reliable but expensive; Opticals, both expensive and unreliable (depending on who you ask); and Zips, a new and highly desirable alternative to the above. Iomega, maker of the Zip drive, also makes Bernoulli cartridge systems, but only about ten Mackers in the country use them. The Syquest 44 and 88 (and 200) meg carts are the most common; because of the success of the Zip there are a lot of used drives on the market. Syquest also makes a 135-meg drive to compete with the Zip, but stay away from it. Too much of a me-too product, it will probably disappear in 6 months. Most expensive is the 3-1/2" Syquest 270-meg cart drive (around $500; $60 for the carts). If this is attractive, wait for the Jaz (more on this later).
Finally, there are tapes. Tape backup is the least painful to use, requiring no attention at all, except to change tapes. This is the method of choice if you have more than a few hundred megs of data on your drive, and want to be absolutely sure that your data is backed up every day.
Tapes come in three basic flavors: TEAC 155 meg (and the older 60-meg) tapes look like audio cassettes; Digital Audio tapes, which store from 1 to 4 gigabytes each, and the recently-available QIC-Wide 3080XLF tapes which can store as much as DAT tapes.
Cheapest is the old TEAC format, which is what I use, but since the product is no longer being made your only option is to ferret out a used unit for around $300. Most expensive is DAT, which starts at $750 and goes up from there. Extra money buys hardware compression, more storage, faster copying, etc. This is the best solution, especially if you are backing up a network. The QIC units have been available on Intel boxes for some time, and are just now becoming available for Macs. They also come bundled with Retrospect (virtually all tape drives do), so for $500 plus a couple of $35 tapes, you are ready to go. APS offers the only ones I have seen, but this may change by publication date.
The first time you back up to floppies it takes all evening, so bring a book. During succeeding backups, the program asks you for additional disks to store newly-created files, and older disks to delete ones you have Trashed. It then reclaims that space for new files, reducing the need for additional floppies. This process goes pretty quickly. You will still need a floppy with a System Folder to restart and a way to repair your HD; you don't need to store the DiskFit DataFile to a separate floppy because you can Restore without it.
Many utility packages also include backup software: Norton, Symantic, even Apple. The Apple product is free, bundled with every system, and worth every penny. Delete it and reclaim 20K valuable space. If you buy a Zip drive, backup software is included, optimized for use with the Zip cartridges. I recommend either of the two Dantz products to my clients.
With either a Zip or a Syquest system, you can create a Rescue cartridge with a copy of your System Folder, Norton Utilities, DiskFix, Disk First Aid, as well as your HD formatting software (I recommend either FWB Personal Toolkit or SilverLining) and your copy of DiskFit or Retrospect. This will get you ready for prompt HD repair and restoration of your data, even if (or especially if) you use a tape system.
If your wallet is slightly thicker, you should have a Zip. Hell, everybody should have a Zip, regardless of what they use for backups. This little cash cow for Iomega ($200 for the drive and $15-$20 for the 94-meg carts) is so desirable and popular there is a 30-day waiting period for backorders to catch up. The carts are small, light and reliable, and based on proven Winchester technology. Zips are also available for Wintel systems (serial or SCSI) and PC disks are readable on Macs, just like floppies. This is utterly wonderful if you need cross-platform transport of large files.
Sometime around November, Iomega will be releasing the Jaz drive, a grown-up Zip. Cost will be $500 and each $100 cart will hold a gig. Yep, 1000 megabytes for $100. I may get one of the first. With this puppy you could just Finder-copy your entire hard drive for immediate backup, but don't forget those folders sitting out on the desktop!
While the QIC tape systems are too new for much feedback to have accumulated, the price is certainly right.
If you routinely work with >5-meg files, and have over 700 megs data on your HD, bite the bullet and get a digital audio tape drive. Configure Retrospect (bundled free, remember) for daily backups, and relax. You will never need to fear a dead hard drive again.
But do something. Now. Put down the magazine and order your backup strategy while you are thinking about it.
No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.
email mp at moonmac dot com. (I took out the mailto link because that's how the spammers find me.)