Chapter 5
" this tape will self destruct in five seconds,"

Should really be the Cartels theme song now. As the Cartel continued to perpetuate anxiety and fear they tossed out life lines like tape backup and mirror or RAID hard drives and the desperate pc users kicked the women and children out of the way to grab them Unfortunately most users were men in the beginning so this does apply.

A colleague of mine was summoned to help a company with its lost data and security measures a few years ago by a friend. Yes this was a national company and it all seemed secure. They had regular checked and verified backups I was informed. As he arrived more of the staff demonstrated to him their honest and disciplined security and back up procedures. As I was chatting with him I asked “did they do a test run with the backups and do they test the backups on a regular basis?”
What do you mean he asked. I was worried from this point on and in a dilemma. My colleague was a very intelligent and experienced security man. However I had to inform him diplomatically of other problems he obviously wasnt aware of.
At first tape back up was a norm or standard but it was also a norm or standard thjat most companies did not have regular and checked backup runs. The problem is that tape drives were extremely problematic unto themselves. Then people would make serious errors in using them and trusting them too much.
Tapes are magnetic and exposed and usually ran compression code. At the tiime I was working for a fortune 500 company and this is where I first came across the problem. We were responsible for and backing up financial records and security codes with the the same tape or zipdrives. I decided to ask one of the technicians to restore the files with the back ups we had been making.

Well it was a disaster and we were both astonished and scared of the results we witnessed. The tape backups were faulty some had even scrambled the data before it had compressed it and some were not even acceptable enough to be restored. The zip drives were even worse after the compression they had destroyed or scrambled the data to a point of futility.
As we discovered the storage and care of the tapes we had been creating were deteriorating the tapes as well.
Reference this article at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1306/is_6_65/ai_54938665
or google faulty zip drives and you will get first hand accounts of what I am talking about.
So I informed my colleague and he repeated my tests with the same outcome.
So tape drives are faulty and broken and so are the tapes and in some cases both. The anxiety rises!

Relax were ok now we have Cd and dvd and dat backups!
Oops I am afraid not . Different format same results. Google these words “Cd backup failure“or look at this link and ponder the possible myriad of problems people have.
http://www.aiscl.co.uk/BackupFAQ.htm
Heres a tip for you to try in your real world. Go grab your wedding tape and get some champagne and celebrate your anniversary with your wife. No actually I dont recommend this, if the tape is over 5 years old or been poorly stored.
I also want to warn you that in 10 years time you wont even have a player to play it on.
Now go and try all those backups you made on the new, safe ,secure , and reliable Cd and dvd r rw rr -r +r and so on. I dont mean just load them and see if they show up I mean restore them try to use them. I can guarantee some of you are in for a horrid suprise. The people that do have success have won the lottery and your fate is much like the vcr users above in a few years.
Most institutions protocol for electronic storage recommend you backup on “paper”thats right paper because technology changes on average ten years and lasts no longer than ten years. Read this for more descriptive ideas.
https://www.sos.state.il.us/departments/archives/records_management/electrecs.html

The software you use daily is also a decoder or translator. As you know if you upgrade to a different version code features and formats change. Even if your lucky enough to have the same software around in ten years it might not be enough. Yes you can restore but to what effectiveness and how long will it take how effective will it be.
Ever try to restore slides or old photos? I have and I have been successful but yet I am a tech guy and it took me a lot of time and effort most would have given up.
The same broken faulty systems you used to create your documents are the same ones you are backing them up with.

Pick the top backup software today like Norton ghost then just like Microsoft go to their troubleshooting or knowledge base section and you will come across the thousands of mistakes and broken pieces of their product. Read what they call solutions.

First of all the sheer number of these files you will fine should give you an idea of the daunting task ahead. Second of all even if you are an advanced user like myself your chances are not good at fixing the broken piece and third of all the time it will take is exhaustive. Please I emplore you go read one of thes simple fixes. Some of the fixes are three and more pages long. Heres a link to one from Norton Ghost

http://symantec.atgnow.com/consumer/resultDisplay.do?gotoLink=1550&docType=1000&contextId=8523%3A1550.1583&clusterName=SymantecConsumer&contentId=5897a756-0956-4061-a9a1-b18d4f40a39a&responseId=9726c2c77dcb4da6%3A1b1fbf4%3A10a7f4a0859%3A378d&groupId=4&answerGroup=21&score=824&page=http%3A%2F%2Fservice1.symantec.com%2Fsupport%2Fsharedtech.nsf%2Fpfdocs%2F2004032409200713&result=20&excerpt=Is+the+problem+in+the+Hosts+file%3F&resultType=5000#

Seriously I am not kidding thats the link to read the fixes its blinding and exhaustive and thats one of thousands they have. Look at the image below its a screen capture of their page

I
cant believe they have the gall to ask you to rate the effectiveness of this. The audacity is impressive at least. Even their own image is broken on their error page, someone cue Alanis Morissette singing about irony .
They actually laughingly asks “is this document easy to use?”
Well if i were a programmer and had a million years to live i would be quite happy with this page, I think.

In conclusion the backup stuff to fix the actual original broken stuff is broken too.
I come across this type of house of cards security or backup daily with big and small companies and individual users , almost everyone is using this broken faulty, unsound, insecure backup protocol and software. I still catch myself relying on this broken stuff.
This book has a backup and a backup of the backup and is ftp on my server and mirrored and a copy lies on a DVD at a friends house and I am not the slightest bit worried now. Really I am not. Seriously I am OK I feel confident.