[geeks] Backup habits of users (Was: Apple and backup habits of users (Was: Windows backup...))

[Sheldon T. Hall]

I love this whole subject.  It really takes me back ...

I know we have real backup software now, some of which actually works, but
do you remember the original BACKUP command in MS-DOS, along about version
2.0?  Those early versions of BACKUP wrote the data out in separate files,
with their original names, but with modified, and longer, contents.  When
you RESTORED the data you got the unmodified contents back.

Would you be suprised to know that I have a great fondness for those early
versions of BACKUP?  I like them because one of them boosted me into
consulting Nirvana, earning me a consulting rate of in excess of $37,000 an
hour.  That's the rate I occasionally quote, even today. When folks ask "How
much do you charge?"  I can honestly reply "Up to $37,500 an hour, but
usually less."

In those long-ago days I worked for a small outfit in Atlanta called "Solid
Software," a misnomer if ever there was one.  I was brought in to re-develop
their accounting software and develop a marketing plan once we got the
functionality in and the bugs out. Meanwhile, to keep the business going,
they were selling what they had.  It was slow, ugly, hard-to-use crap, but
it generally worked as advertised.  If you were careful.

One of our dealers had some problems on a customer site, and he kept backing
up his customer's hard disk and sending the backup disks to us for analysis;
the stuff all worked fine at our shop, but it wouldn't do diddley when we
sent the disks back to him. Finally, propelled by frustration and the threat
of a lawsuit by his customer, he _demanded_ that we send someone out to
California to fix the problem.

"Fine," said I, "$2,500 plus expenses, cashier's check only."

"I don't give a flying **** what it costs, if we can't fix this ********
that ******* is going to sue the **** out of me, so get your *** out here
and fix this ************," quoth he, waxing wroth.  That was his name,
Waxroth.

So I went.  I got the check at the airport, and he drove me to the customer
site; I walked over to the computer, typed "DIR" and saw that the file sizes
were wrong.  The tell-tale "BACKUP.@@@" file was there, too, indicating that
he had COPYed the files back to the hard disk, rather than RESTORing them.
I asked for the backup diskettes, RESTOREd the files, gave the usual startup
command, and it worked.

Elapsed time on-site, four minutes.  60 * (2500/4) = $37,500.

Was he grateful that I'd kept "that *******" from suing him?  Not on your
life.  He was livid.  I had made the fix look "too easy" and thus lessened
its perceived value.  He would have been delighted if it had taken me a day
and a half, but a four-minute fix just p!ssed him off.

-Shel

PS:  This is why I rather like rsync's putting out regular files, rather
than some package format you have to have special software ro read.