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Save Early, Save Often, Make Backups I: The Format
12 years ago
#!/bin/sh
printf "%s " "shouting into the void..."
( cat << HERE
printf "%s " "shouting into the void..."
( cat << HERE
Save early, save often, make backups. It's a data preservation mantra that some people learn the hard way. I'm no exception, and I was just reminded of the heartbreak about 20 years ago that drilled it into my head, along with the need to pay attention to what I'm doing.
Back in the day, before they became necessities in today's PCs, hard drives were incredibly expensive luxuries for home computers. Ten megabytes of space would easily set you back at least $200, and it was far more spacious than it's regarded today because floppy disks -- the standard form of storage back then -- stored less than half a megabyte each. Things were more interesting then because it was only a well-expanded home computer that had more than one floppy drive. This became a problem because copying files from one disk to another involved swapping disks in and out of the drive many times, depending on the size of the file and the memory in the computer.
Nevertheless, I had a lot of floppies and I wanted to make copies of things I made. Floppy disks didn't come preformatted back then, so before you could save anything on them you had to format them. If you were lucky, they came IBM-formatted (which is still alive and well today as the DOS/Windows FAT-12 format), unless you used one of IBM's dozens of cheaper or superior competitors. I used the Apple II+ and the Commodore 64.
One day, I learned the hard way that, when you're copying files, you need to pay close attention to what you're doing or you'll have a data loss disaster. What was the hard way? Well, I broke out a new disk and put in the old disk to verify that I was going to copy the right one, and then I went to format the new disk. Now in my defense, if you know where this is going already, the Commodore 64 didn't make formatting easy. There's no built-in BASIC command; you have to use BASIC's "open" command to send a format command to the Commodore 1541 disk drive's built-in DOS, and the incantation is especially cryptic.
During the confusion, I found myself realizing that I was holding the blank disk I wanted to format in my hand while the disk I wanted to copy files from was quietly formatting away in the disk drive, all the files being wiped over and the file accounting data long since erased.
Heartbreak is the cruelest teacher.
Back in the day, before they became necessities in today's PCs, hard drives were incredibly expensive luxuries for home computers. Ten megabytes of space would easily set you back at least $200, and it was far more spacious than it's regarded today because floppy disks -- the standard form of storage back then -- stored less than half a megabyte each. Things were more interesting then because it was only a well-expanded home computer that had more than one floppy drive. This became a problem because copying files from one disk to another involved swapping disks in and out of the drive many times, depending on the size of the file and the memory in the computer.
Nevertheless, I had a lot of floppies and I wanted to make copies of things I made. Floppy disks didn't come preformatted back then, so before you could save anything on them you had to format them. If you were lucky, they came IBM-formatted (which is still alive and well today as the DOS/Windows FAT-12 format), unless you used one of IBM's dozens of cheaper or superior competitors. I used the Apple II+ and the Commodore 64.
One day, I learned the hard way that, when you're copying files, you need to pay close attention to what you're doing or you'll have a data loss disaster. What was the hard way? Well, I broke out a new disk and put in the old disk to verify that I was going to copy the right one, and then I went to format the new disk. Now in my defense, if you know where this is going already, the Commodore 64 didn't make formatting easy. There's no built-in BASIC command; you have to use BASIC's "open" command to send a format command to the Commodore 1541 disk drive's built-in DOS, and the incantation is especially cryptic.
During the confusion, I found myself realizing that I was holding the blank disk I wanted to format in my hand while the disk I wanted to copy files from was quietly formatting away in the disk drive, all the files being wiped over and the file accounting data long since erased.
Heartbreak is the cruelest teacher.
