Worth Keeping

While creating a soft product (document, process script, data set, etc), save the work in progress. Computer users occasionally experience frustrating loss of work when system power is interrupted or when applications unexpectedly crash. Frequently saving work in progress reduces the liability of such misfortune.

Beyond frequently saving work in progress, a regular discipline of backup can avert profound grief.

Most computer systems can be restored by replacing components. Consider the different points of system failure:

• Software
• Firmware
• Motherboard
• CPU
• Power supply
• Memory
• Above board component
• Peripheral/subsystem component

In most system failure circumstances, data can be migrated from original file subsystem configurations into the recovery system configuration. That is the afforded elegance of system integration standards. Most commonly, the old system primary hard disk becomes the recovery system primary hard disk and the recovery system is almost indistinguishable from the original system.

In very few trivial recoveries, replacing or reconfiguring failure points may not require data backup. More involved cases (particularly file subsystem failures) nearly always require an appropriate data backup for successful data reintegration. Without an appropriate data backup, there is not certainty of successful data reintegration in any recovery.

The cost of data backup is small when considering the original investments. In some cases, additional time may sufficiently restore data inventory. Data from commercial archives and current applications, for monetary considerations, can be regained. There are some data which defy accurate recreation by any investment:

• pictorial samples of life activity
• audio samples of life activity
• paperless office records
• homework
• creative writing
• conversations with now-deceased people

What is your data worth?