But it will be safer if you back it up
Oh, for the days when backing up your data meant writing down some telephone numbers on the back of a used envelope. The real reason why so many people work without a parachute is that it takes too long to copy all the stuff we collect on our computer hard drives.
I’m filled with good intentions about making backups. I have tried the different media over the years; diskettes (different sizes), magnetic tape, optical media, auxiliary hard drives. Each one with a cost involved.
This evening, in preparation for summer away from the house, I hooked up an external hard drive which pretended to be a brick. Not good: this was one that was purchased about seven months ago, but after trying three different computers, I decided to pop the warranty sticker and look for obvious distress signals.
Nothing obvious, so I popped out the actual drive and moved it to another external case. All is now well, which shows that the original controller was probably lying in wait to trap me.
Vista can be slow to respond to things, due to the dozens of processes that run, willy-nilly, in the background. Patiently I killed things off until it felt “right” and then started the backup software.
The estimate for the first drive (I have more than one, of course) is four hours. That puts me into tomorrow, so this backup run will take several days to be truly done and stored. Then I’ll start on the next machine down the table.
That’s why backups are rare.
