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This article first appeared in the November 1998 issue of the Louisville Computer News. It was written by Lee Larson.
Last Friday evening, a friend of mine was working on her computer, putting the finishing touches on her latest digital masterpiece, when the lights flickered, the mouse froze and her Mac was road kill on the information highway.
It got worse.
The machine refused to restart. After the mellow bong and the smiling face, she was informed "This disk is unreadable." Her hard drive was hosed. That's when she called me.
The story does have a happy ending. There wasn't much wrong with her hard drive, and TechTool Pro repaired it at once. Apparently Canvas had been storing her digital masterpiece when the lights burped, so that file was destroyed. Luckily, she has a tape drive, and we were able to restore the previous day's version of the file in a few minutes, so not much was lost.
It could have been much worse. Most people I know don't make regular backups of their work. A power surge, a lightning strike, or a stray cosmic ray hitting the wrong bit on a hard drive is all that's needed to lose years of work. It's happened to me several times, and that's why I'm a fanatic about backing things up.
The old-fashioned method of backing up data to floppies is untenable these days because a typical modern hard drive might require several thousand floppies for a full backup. Those of us who remember how tedious it was to back up a 40 megabyte hard drive to floppies pale at the thought of trying it with a four gigabyte drive. This is probably one of the reasons Apple felt a floppy drive in the iMac was no necessity.
Ideally, backing up should be something that's done with almost no work, time, or thought. If any effort is involved, most of us will find an excuse to put it off until tomorrow.
The problem is that the easiest backup methods are the most expensive.
For example, by far the easiest way to back up data is with a RAID system. RAID is short for "redundant array of independent disks." In this type of setup, data is automatically mirrored to two or more hard drives as it's written. You don't have to think about it at all. If one drive crashes, the other one still contains the data. The catch is that most of us can only dream about such convenience because the cheapest RAID setups cost several thousand dollars. I'd rather put the money into a better computer. If you're still interested in RAID for the Mac, check out APS Technology (http://www.apstech.com).
The next most convenient backup method is probably tape. For Macs, there are basically two different types of tape drives available: DAT and QIC.
DAT drives use digital audio tape as the storage medium. The tapes are cheap, but the drives are expensive. A DAT drive costs about $750 and tapes holding eight gigabytes of data are under $10.
QIC, also known as Travan drives, use quarter-inch tape cartridges for storage. QIC drives are cheaper, but the tapes cost more. The drives cost about $350, and the tapes, which hold four gigabytes of data, are about $40.
For industrial sized backups, DAT might turn out to be cheaper. In addition, DAT is faster and has been around longer, so many people feel it's safer.
Almost all Mac tape drives ship with Retrospect software, published by Dantz (http://www.dantz.com). Retrospect is marvelous software which has the unusual distinction of being both easy to use and very powerful. All my computers have been backed up to tape by Retrospect for quite a while. The system is almost effortless. Retrospect comes alive on my main machine every morning at 12:01 A.M. It compares the files from all the machines on my small network with what has already been backed up, and then copies any new or changed files to tape. After it's done, it tells the machines to turn themselves off. Once it's set up, this scheme requires no work except a weekly change of tapes. If a machine is on at 12:01 A.M., it gets backed up. If not, Retrospect tries again the next morning.
Retrospect has many more features than can be listed here, but notable among these is the ability to back up Windows 95/98/NT machines to a tape drive connected to a Mac. The machines out on the network, whether Macs or PC's must be running additional client software called Retrospect Remote. Retrospect 4.1 was introduced a few weeks ago, and it has the added ability to back up local machines to a remote ftp site on the Internet.
Tape drives are expensive, so many people are using a different strategy, which is not quite so convenient. They're using high capacity removable media such as Zip, Jaz or SuperDrive for backups. For some people, this is a penny-wise and pound-foolish approach. A typical four gigabyte hard drive will need 20 to 40 Zip disks to do a full backup, costing as much as $300 for the disks. Add to this the $150 or so for a Zip drive, and QIC looks like a better buy. Of course, the counter-argument is that the Zip drive can be used for purposes other than backups.
Backing up to something like a Zip or Jaz drive is tedious and error-prone without special software. Retrospect will back up to such removable media, but Dantz has recently introduced less expensive software, called Retrospect Express, just for that purpose. Express will store backup files to removable cartridges, CDR, optical disks or floppy disks, but not tape. You still have to sit there and feed disks to the hungry machine, but Retrospect Express keeps track of the bookkeeping.
For those who are really paranoid, or have very important data, another quite expensive, but very secure option for storage has recently become available. Using the ability of Retrospect 4.1 to back up data to remote ftp sites, Digital Forest (http://www.forest.net) has started an Internet backup service called RECOVER-iT. (That's really the way they write it!) You'll need a high-speed Internet connection, but for about $100 per month per gigabyte, they'll store your data in a safe place, and you can get to it any time via ftp.
Miscellaneous Notes
The most important Mac news of the last month is Apple's October 17 release Mac OS 8.5. It is available from many sources for a list price of $99. There are special upgrade prices for people who have recently purchased Macintoshes. Among the new features in Mac OS 8.5 are:
Sherlock, the personal search detective that allows users to find information on their Macintosh and the Internet quickly and easily.
Improved network copy performance that Apple claims is faster than Windows NT.
PowerPC-native AppleScript that is up to five times faster, provides control of nearly all aspects of the Mac OS and includes the ability to attach scripts to folders for easily automating tasks.
A simplified installation process that allows most users to upgrade in less than 15 minutes. Installs can be saved for reuse and there is now support for simultaneous "push" installs of Mac OS 8.5 on networked Macs, using Apple Network Assistant.
QuickTime 3, the latest version of Apple's software for digital media publishing and play-back. The 8.5 upgrade CD includes the full commercial package of QuickTime 3, rather than the free abbreviated package available for download.
Multilingual Internet Access for viewing web sites and e-mail messages from around the world in almost any language.
Support for the new Euro currency symbol.
For more new feature details, see the Mac OS 8.5 developers web site (http://developer.apple.com/macos/8.5.html).
Hot on the heels of the Autostart worm, there's another new Mac virus called the Graphics Accelerator virus. This virus got its name because it was first noticed in a file called Graphics Accelerator which was uploaded to several of the big Internet software archives. The program purported to speed the graphics display of PowerMacs, but it actually contained a nasty virus. At this time, Norton Antivirus has been updated to handle it, but Virex has not. There are several free tools to detect and remove the virus. For up to date information see the MacInTouch special report at http://www.macintouch.com/graphacc.html.
In an unusual marketing move, Nisus Software has released an older version of its excellent word processor, Nisus Writer, for free. The older version, Nisus Writer 4.1, is a powerful program with features that rival most competing products, including unlimited undo, discontiguous selection, customizable multiple key keyboard shortcuts, GREP searching, powerful macro capabilities, graphics creation, and support for WorldScript. Nisus Writer has long been the word processor of choice for people who wish to mix several languages requiring different scripts in the same document.
Nisus Writer 5 has been out for over a year, but many old-time Nisus users never abandoned version 4.1 because it runs well on lesser hardware, such as older PowerBooks and machines with little RAM.
The free Nisus Writer 4.1 doesn't include a printed manual or technical support, but they can be purchased separately. In addition, a well-written book by Joe Kissell called The Nisus Way (ISBN 1-55828-455-9) documents version 4.1.
For more information, see the Nisus Software web site, http://www.nisus.com.
Louisville Computer Society
The November 23 meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will include a presentation by Intermedia's @Home manager, James Thompson. He will discuss Intermedia cable modem plans for the Louisville area.
The Louisville Computer Society meets on the fourth Monday evening of every month at 7:00 PM in the East Government Center on Juneau Drive in Middletown. For more information, see their web site at http://www.aye.net/~lcs, or e-mail lcs@aye.net.
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