If your hard drive fails and you don’t have up-to-date, functioning backups, you call in the data recovery experts. It’s kind of like sending your drive in for emergency surgery—down to the sterile environment the engineers have to operate in. Chances are, your drive is dead for good, but it might be possible to give your data a new lease on life. On February 16th I received an invitation to … [Read more...]
The Halloween Backup Reminder: Wanna See Something Really Scary?
'Tis the season when folks hang skeletons in their windows and visit haunted houses, and it only seemed right to get into the spirit of Halloween by providing some computer-related horror stories. Back in 1998, Geek Culture’s Mind Numbing Magazine™ created a clever introductory page for the computer horror stories they hoped to collect: It can happen to anyone, even you. One minute you’re fine, … [Read more...]
The Case of the Self-Destructing Database: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 12-9-05:
Just to prove that Mac users can have computer disasters too, here is the story of how a colleague lost his Entourage database (and a chunk of money) but gained liberation. I’ve compiled several e-mail messages into one narrative, but think he tells the story better than I could—including the unexpected up side. I was using Entourage X (part of Office X for the Mac) and its upper limit for its … [Read more...]
FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 9-2-05: Backups in the Air, on the Air, and Underwater
It seems like everywhere I turn these days I hear about backups. I was reading The Everything Guide to Writing a Book Proposal and there, on page 198, under the heading “Protecting Your Professional Image,” is a warning to back up. “One writer, two days before she was due to turn in several chapters to her editor, found that the diskette she had been using to store her work had been damaged … [Read more...]