How to Backup: Keep Some Old Backup Data For Possible Restore Purposes

The disciple said to the master: "My external hard drive is full of old backups, and I have many rewritable disks and tapes full of old backups, surely it would be responsible use of the earth's resources to delete all the old backups and reuse the space for new ones?"

The master replied: "The true way of backup has ditches on either side, do not forsake all your old backups, neither keep them all if they become a burden. Choose wisely, and archive some old backups for future reference. For even since ancient times wise men have understood the importance of archiving old data. Consider the holy writings of old, how can we be sure the ones we have today are not corrupted or incomplete if we cannot compare them to older copies? And consider this, if a document or file became corrupted or lost many moons ago, and the incident went unnoticed, the corruption would have been copied to all the backups made thereafter. The only way to restore wholeness to the corrupted data would be with a version that predates the incident, for such a one would be free from the inherited corruption. So, I tell you, when it comes to data backups and copies of holy writings, the older they are, the less likely they are corrupted by unnoticed errors. Therefore, saving some old backups may one day save you from disaster, so do unto them as you would have them do unto you." Next Page...


Prologue	Totality	Regularity	Continuity	Locality	Longevity	Security	Integrity	Epilogue