expensive your backups become—discouraging you from making them. Find
a balance between cost and convenience that suits your security needs.
Timing—that’s the secret to saving your electronic diamonds or
rhinestones on your floppies, whatever the quality.
In the past, working just with paper, timing meant to me nothing more
than the Rothman Chronological Method. The newer the document on my
desk, the closer it would be to the top of the file. It wasn’t the most
efficient way. But I rarely lost material, just temporarily misplaced
it. Computerizing, however, I worried.
“Floppies are treacherous,” my friend Michael Canyes said like a John
Bircher discussing commies. “They always trick you when you least expect
it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “The way you’re encouraging me to computerize, I’m
beginning to think you actually want to sabotage me. Help me lose my
manuscripts and all that.”
“Just back up your copy page or so,” Michael said.
“Isn’t that a lot of trouble?”
“Maybe twenty seconds. Then you’re protected if the power fails. Or
maybe your computer. You can’t afford to have your material stored just
in on your chip. It’s just temporary. You cut off the current a fraction
of a second, it’ll forget everything. You’ve got to get your stuff on
the disk ASAP.”
All right, I supposed my creative juices wouldn’t dry up during the half
minute the disk drive was whirring.
“The ‘Save’ command on WordStar is =KS=,” Michael said. “Just hold down
the ‘Control’ button on your computer while you’re doing that. Then
you’ll hear a whir and the disk drive clicking away.” Somehow my Kaypro
was coming across as an animal to be fed during training; the clicking
could be the sound of a dog chomping up candied biscuits after a
successful lesson.
“You’re also going to make backup disks,” Michael said. “Sort of like
electronic carbon paper.”
“I don’t have time,” I said.
“You’ll find time. You can do it in just a minute or so. You can even
use a scratch disk to be safe.”
“What’s a scratch disk?”
“Suppose the power failed or something went wrong with your machine
while you were making your copy,” Michael said. “Then you could be up
the creek without a paddle. You might lose both the original and the
copy.”
“So?”
“That’s why you have a scratch disk. You copy on it first. If something
goes haywire, then you’re still safe. Because, during your last work
session, you made a backup.”
“Theoretically,” I said.
“And if something goes wrong while you’re recording on your permanent
backup disk, then you can just work from the scratch disk. It’s just
what it sounds, sort of a scratch pad.”
“Oh, I’ll use paper, thank you,” I persisted. “The best backup yet.
It’ll be years before it falls apart. And who knows? Maybe by then the
Library of Congress will be preserving my manuscripts.”
Michael withheld a guffaw.
“Well, I can type a mean streak on my Selectric,” I said. “I can get my
stuff back into the computer in no time.”
Always the patient teacher, Michael didn’t argue.
Presumably, however, another writer nowadays would have agreed with
Michael immediately. His editors had been looking forward to having the
printer set type from the disk he’d submit with the paper version of his
manuscript—a crowded floppy storing every single byte from his toil.
Then the editors could bring the book out six or eight weeks faster,
with the disk in the printer’s hands. But in this unlucky man’s case the
disk never reached the printer’s hungry computer—he hadn’t, alas, made
an electronic copy. A case of hubris if ever there was one.
You might avoid such traumas by following the Rothman Chronological
Method II (RCM II), a lazy man’s form of data security for those with
fast printers: