Alternative to floppy?

[Geoff Hart]

Dan Goldstein, who's lucky his message title made it past my spam  
filter <g>, wondered: <<A current procedure tells the customer to  
save a configuration file to a floppy disk, write-protect the floppy,  
label the floppy, and store the floppy for future reference. Happy  
2008! Floppy has left the building. The PC in question wouldn't  
necessarily have a CD-ROM burner, so that's not an option. A thumb  
drive isn't as easily write-protected, and of course some customers  
would be tempted to overwrite it and use it for other purposes. The  
PC in question wouldn't necessarily have e-mail access, but it would  
probably have Internet access. Still, it would be nice to come up  
with a cheap, simple, hard-media alternative to the floppy. Any  
thoughts?>>

If you've got Internet access, you have e-mail access: Gmail, Yahoo,  
whatever. I usually teach people (e.g., in editing workshops) that  
the simplest of all backup strategies is to open a free Gmail account  
and send their files to their Gmail account (via the Web interface if  
they aren't using their e-mail software for whatever reason).

But the real issue here is not the means to an end, but rather the  
end itself: making a secure copy you can easily retrieve. So the  
solution is to word the description in that manner: "Once you have a  
stable configuration file, make a safe copy somewhere so you can  
retrieve it if necessary: for example, use removable storage media  
(such as a diskette, thumb drive, or CD), or in a backup directory on  
your network. Label the copy clearly so that you don't accidentally  
erase that copy."

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-- Geoff Hart
ghart at videotron.ca / geoffhart at mac.com
www.geoff-hart.com
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