TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: PC TECH question: floppy net obsolete? From:Matt Ion <soundy -at- ROGERS -dot- WAVE -dot- CA> Date:Mon, 15 Sep 1997 07:58:35 -0800
On Mon, 15 Sep 1997 15:30:51 +0200, John -dot- Cornellier -at- PARIS -dot- IE -dot- PHILIPS -dot- COM
wrote:
>Q: Anybody using ZIP drives, portable hard drives, streamers and such things?
Extensively.
>Background: I must move 10s of MBs of files, most of which are too big to fit on
>a single floppy, between home and work. Peer to peer on the PSTN is an option
>but not terribly practical at 8MB per hour. Ditto internet email.
Indeed. By the time the download finishes, it's time to go back to work
again :-)
>I try to use PKZIP with spanning, but more often than not it fails on one of the
>floppies, with no recovery option. Scandisk finds no physical errors. Is it me,
>or is there a better software for multifloppy archiving?
Any decent backup package will support floppies, as a legacy issue if
nothing else. Most can also perform a verify operation, although that
may require you to shuffle the backup set through the drive again once
the initial backup is done.
>A portable HD could have three uses: portability, archiving, and backup. A
>second internal HD could do the latter two.
Right.
Look into a ZIP drive or two. They're well under CDN$200 these days.
The parallel-port version is infinitely convenient, because you can take
the drive itself with you and plug it in to any PC with a printer port.
Run the included GUEST utility, and the drive is accessible - no need to
install drivers and/or reboot. GUEST does exactly what the name
suggests: makes the drive a guest, a temporary "visitor", on the system.
If you really want to get fancy about it, you can also add an internal
SCSI- or IDE-based ZIP drive to your own machine; these have somewhat
faster transfer rates than the parallel-port version, and then you always
have it there.
Your friend and mine,
Matt
<insert standard disclaimer here>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is impossible to rightly govern the world
without God and the Bible.
- George Washington
TECHWR-L (Technical Communication) List Information: To send a message
to 2500+ readers, e-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot- Send commands
to LISTSERV -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU (e.g. HELP or SIGNOFF TECHWR-L).
Search the archives at http://www.documentation.com/ or search and
browse the archives at http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html
