Re: Data Storage and File Management

Subject: Re: Data Storage and File Management
From: Eric Ray <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1999 20:30:30 -0600

At 11:50 AM 4/1/99 -0500, George F. Hayhoe wrote:
>especially Elna Tymes and Mike Uhl, have said. This thread
>is more relevant to our field than to almost any other I can

Absolutely. Let me point out that ALL of the discussions
about 1 vs. 2 spaces after a period (no, let's don't talk
about it), voice, usability, and everything else go out the
window if the source documents are lost. Even if you have
completely current hardcopy, you're still looking at
an incredible amount of time and possibility to introduce
mistakes to documents before your hardcopy docs become
usable softcopy again.

>If you're an independent or a lone writer, you have to do
>all this yourself--a really tough job, the significance of
>which you underestimate at your peril.

Again, absolutely. For what it's worth, here's how backups
work at Raycomm, Inc.

Every week, on Sunday in the wee hours, all folders containing
any data are backed up automatically to a separate physical
disk on the file server. This includes personal directories,
all email, and separate archives for books, contract work,
administrative stuff, web server files, and a couple of
misc. categories. Data directories on our individual computers
are manually backed up weekly, but it's not automated yet.

We get a notification email after the process is complete.
At that point, we manually copy all of the archived files to a
separate computer. At least every three weeks, and more
often if the volume of work or changes justify it, we
burn a CD with the current versions and the n-1 versions
of all the archival files. On Monday morning, the CD
goes to the safe deposit box at the bank and joins many,
many companions.

In the meantime--every night--all files that changed in the
previous 24 hours on the file server (not on individual computers)
are automatically archived and moved onto a separate
disk.

So, with that, a fatal disk crash costs at worst a day of
work, a smoked computer costs a week, a house fire
costs less than 1 month of work. Granted, if the house
burns, we'll have other concerns, but if everything we've
done for the last three+ years disappears in flames,
we'll have a longer list of concerns than we otherwise
would have had.

Overkill? Not hardly. That system is actually a fairly
rational cost/benefit analysis of the cost to us
and our clients of losing stuff and the hassle of
doing backups well. A catastrophic computer loss
(say, a lightening strike that guts the UPS, surge protectors,
power supplies, and all computers) would set us
back for two days of work to setup new computers,
plus potentially the time back to the last CD burn.
A more nearly guaranteed uptime solution would backup
all workstation setups etc. to the server nightly, but
in our case, it's more economical to gamble on just
restoring a single data directory and reinstalling everything
else.

(BTW, fully 1/2 of our decision to move to a Linux
server was the ease of automating backups etc. Blue
screens were the other half.)

>Stuff happens. People get sick, quit, even die. Hardware
>fails. When the unforeseen inevitably happens, a well
>designed, well communicated, and well enforced data storage
>and file management process will ensure that everyone on the
>publications team knows where the most recent version of
>every file related to a project is located and can access
>them.

You bet. And if the unforeseen happens to you, you'll
either be responsible (from the perspective of your
boss or clients) and be worrying and communicating
about your files when you should be worrying about other
stuff, or have your priorities in order, let the job go
hang, and find your pink slip when you return. Your
choice. Or, if it happens to someone in your group,
do you really want to be thinking "Boy, I sure hope that
old Joe's alright after that car wreck...wonder what the
password to his machine is..."

>If you can afford to lose more than a day's worth of work,
>this argument isn't going to convince you, but most of us
>have better things to do with our own, our boss's, and our
>customers' time than to need to recreate a document because
>a disk crashed.

At the risk of being incredibly cliche about this, I'd love
to see a statistical analysis to find out the correlation between
those who trust in the network/computer/MTBF/ain't gonna
happen to me factors, and those who haven't yet needed
backups desperately.

A story...
A few years ago, Deborah was working on a big project.
Moonlighting, actually, because we hadn't yet formed Raycomm.
We hadn't ever set up a formal backup plan, but I was
the de facto geek, thus responsible for keeping
our computers running, upgrading as needed, fixing problems,
etc. I was fixing some stuff on her computer and realized
that the best and easiest solution was to just wipe the hard
drive, fix the physical problems, and start over. I carefully
verified that all of her mail files, school files, work files, etc.
were on the non-problematic harddrive, then formatted the
other. Then I remembered that she'd been keeping her
other project on the second drive...

I checked, and double-checked, and triple-checked, and
sure enough, I'd just formatted her entire project. Backups?
Sure. Well, they'd been on my to-do list for a while. How long?
Oh, about two months. How long had Deb been working on this
project? Oh, about two months. Nothing was backed up. All that
we could do was buy a scanner (back when they rarely approached
95% accuracy), scan the review copies (that's how close to
done she was), hire our friends and acquaintances to proofread
and input corrections, and hope for the best. Fortunately,
other delays in the project (out of her control) obscured this little
scheduling glitch, but the project was a financial disaster
for us and a hell of a second anniversary present. Sigh.

It's impossible to over emphasize how important backups are.

Eric

Oh, and Deb forgave me. She was really nice and understanding
about it, thus compounding my guilt. Couldn'ta been intentional.


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Eric J. Ray RayComm, Inc.
http://www.raycomm.com/ ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com

*Award-winning author of several popular computer books
*Syndicated columnist: Rays on Computing
*Technology Department Editor, _Technical Communication_

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