There
Is No BackupThere
Is No BackupThursday, December 31, 2009 1:52 pm. I was kavorting in my Komputer Attik, performing the ritual Thursday backup which, as usual, failed in marvelous ways. ... Actually they aren’t that marvelous; it’s happened before. The second CDR backup copy has been failing fairly regularly, on my $300 XP emachine-of-the-week and of course when that happens, Windows sleeps the sleep of the dead for 5 or ten minutes. I mean, a sophisticated high-tech operating system must deal with these things in its own wildly incompetent way. ... Often, I will just power cycle the stupid thing to get it back. ... To be able to eject the CDR, for instance.
So I was cursing and screaming but I realized — actually, a few weeks ago — it’s not just the stupid CDRs, the stupid Sony drive in the emachine, the stupid emachine, and of course the stupid Windows — well actually, it probably is the stupid Windows. ... But my point is, in all likelihood, nothing works. ... I mean, the only reason I’m screaming about the CDRs is because I check them! ... I mean, I do; probably the only person on the North American continent, but I actually run a verify step on every backup, which is what fails....
But if I checked the other things I do with this valuable hi-tech modern American Microsoft-based equipment, they’d probably all fail randomly and regularly also! ... I mean each of these backups is, via an Attic Redundancy Policy, stuffed with almost 700 megabytes, and if I checked file copies, printing, graphics handling, whatever I do for every byte of every 700 megabytes, probably none of it would work either! ... Indeed, things are constantly breaking so badly with our valuable hi-tech modern American Microsoft-based equipment, everyone curses and screams at it — and they’re not even trying to verify it!
But then it occurred to me, on the dark cold last day of the year, that probably nobody’s backup works, either! ... Of course! ... I mean, why should it? ... The admirable Spolsky apparently recently discovered that backup is not enough — he actually says nothing about verification, but instead points out that until you’ve recovered a supposed backup, you aren’t backed-up. He specifically sites a web service, which leads me cruelly to suspect a trouble-in-paradise situation here — but whatever! ... (I, of course, don’t even expect to recover backups; I expect to recover files, and I often have! ... Because after I scream and curse around the attic enough, I have always gotten my backups to verify.)
In theory, all the backups-that-aren’t Spolsky’s discussing have been verified — and so of course has whatever you think you’re backed-up with. Like Mr. Corporation where you work. ... Of course if you’re a home computer user, you don’t backup at all, so you probably wonder what all the hysteria is about — and really I’ve given you another excuse to just ignore the whole thing — ’cause chances are, whatever you’re supposed to do won’t work anyway! ... Because NOTHING DOES! ABSOLUTE EFFING NOTHING! ... I think we really need a motivational poster for that....
I suppose I should mention the CDR that didn’t verify on the hi-tech modern American Microsoft-based $300 XP emachine does verify on my $300 Walmart Windows 7 emachine! ... Think of it; written on one XP machine, and actually reads and verifies successfully on a different computer and a different operating system! ... And as opposed to the typical 2-minute wait to just mount the thing on the XP machine, the CDR was usable in under 30 seconds! ... And it verified good! — in 6 minutes, as opposed to the modern American etc. which verified successfully at 22 minutes, before failing utterly on a 2nd verify. ... Which sounds good for Windows 7, but on the other hand lets Sony and emachine off, suggesting it was the super competent Redmond scamps responsible — probably bungling XP DVD DRM....
Thursday, January 7, 2010 12:51 pm. Then again, I’d have to say it’s looking bad for the Sony DVDRW drive. I have a USB DVDRW connected to the same machine, and it works great! Writes, reads/verifies. So presumably the Sony junk is gershtunk, which pretty-much accords with my Sony experiences. Of course emachines is grievously at fault also. ... But then Windows probably still waits 1, two, five minutes — 20 minutes? half an hour? 2 days? — to resolve an error which, as far as I’m concerned, is broken.
