OpenEuphoria

RE: Backups

• Posted by phil long <tinstaafl at attbi.com> Mar 26, 2002
• 360 views

I also do not like 'smart' (so-called, anyway) software that backs up my 
work for me.  Over the years, I've learned to save frequently.  I use 
the DJGPP port of RCS to back up important work (and VSS from MS, 
because it's required at work), and I'm learning to use the CYGWIN port 
of CVS (a concurrent archival system much like VSS).  I've worked on 
VAXes with RMS in the past (RMS is a versioning filesystem), and it's 
convenient to have multiple versions of files hanging around, but they 
soon take up too much room unless you remember to put a version limit on 
the file or its directory.  Archiving systems usually save the 
_differences_ between files and the latest version, so that it can work 
backwards to recover older versions, and all your _important_ work is 
thus recoverable.

Unfortunately, not everybody has reliable power, but even when I've 
worked in areas that have frequent power interruptions, I've only rarely 
lost work, and never anything not easily recovered.  This may be dumb 
luck, but my experience stretches over almost three decades now, with 
power provided from everybody to Florida Flicker and Flash to Seabrook 
Nuclear Power Station.  The bottom line is that you should SAVE 
FREQUENTLY and RATIONALLY.

					Thx, Phil Long
kbochert at ix.netcom.com wrote:
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> 
> Backups are for wimps! 
> 
> I thought it might amuse you folks to hear that I am a
> long-term programmer who does not use backups.
> I don't use an autosaving editor or a UPS. The rare backups
> that I have made have never been used.
> 
> I do save my edit files frequently, and on the rare times
> that Windows crashes, I might lose as much as 20 minutes
> of edits, but I find they are so fresh in my mind that I can
> recreate them in 5 minutes (and do them more cleanly besides).
> 
> I also use Qwin to create an audit trail of software versions
> and this has enabled me to back out of an ill-advised change,
> but has never been used to recover from a system failure.
> 
> I guess it helps to be on friendly terms with the hardware 
> 
> Karl Bochert
> 
> 
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