Chapter
5
In Ccise of Tremble
The first part of this chapter describes how
to
avoid losing important information. The second
part describes error messages, the computer's
way of warning
you
about trouble.
The
Kef
s to Keeping
Inicrmcrtion
Backups
The best way to avoid losing
important infor-
mation is
to have a complete library
of back-
ups.
Whenever
you
store information,
keep at
least two copies of it:
•
Working
—
for daily
use
•
Backup
—
for backing
up your
working
diskette whenever
you
make significant
changes
to
it.
Whenever
you get a
diskette containing
a
new
operating system or application program, write
protect it immediately
(as
shown in
Chapter
2).
Use
this
as a
master diskette
to
make your
working and backup diskettes. Then, store this
master diskette in
a
safe place and
use
it only
for making backups.
Drive Maintenance
Proper care of your disk drives
also
is essen-
tial
to
keeping information. Disk
drives have
small, fragile heads that read
from
and
write
to
the diskette. The head can become dirty
from
particles in the air, such as dust and cigarette
smoke. Therefore,
you
must clean the head
regularly. Failure
to
do
so
may cause not
only
information loss, but damage to the diskette
or
even
the
drive head.
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