ScuzzBlog: Diaries December 2020
Entry 22nd December 2020: Post 1: ZIP, Ditto, Jumbo Trakker, Accutrak.
ZIP, Ditto, Jumbo Trakker, Accutrak.
Following on from my fun yesterday with the RM computer and the ZIP
I decided to pull my stuff out of storage relating to PC Back-up
software. This included quite a lot of tape back-up tools like
those provided for the Colorado Back-up System.
Interesting how tape dominated in the nineties. Certainly during
the win3.x era the offices I worked in had rooms dedicated to tape
back up. We were always asked to log out early on Friday so the guy
could back everything up.
The size and type of tape also varied. It's hard to even perceive
these days how difficult it would be to find an actual piece of
usable data on these tapes. In all the time I backed up to tape I
never once had cause to retrieve anything.
The ZIP kinda took hold from around 1996 with Win95. Even so, DOS
still played a heavy part in the admin of computers. Most software
and hardware of the time paid good respect to DOS as a support tool.
ZIPS started as external and 100MB and then went internal and 250.
Soon we were moving over to the Ditto from Iomega as the primary
back-up tool. I have so many boxes of tapes here, you just wouldn't
believe how much data is stored here. Incredible really.
I did start to collect tape machines for backing up, but gave up.
It really is a specialist form of system that requires a lot of
dedication not simply setting up but also cracking the various ways
back-ups were organised and structured. The two units I have are
the Jumbo Trakker and the Accutrak. Amazing bits of kit, but totally
useless. Thank goodness CD writers came onto the market and then
better still the good old USB stick.
I can still hear the distant whirr of a Colorado tape machine in
the computer going through its endless tape backing-up for thirty
minutes each and every Friday. It really was so annoying.
I was instrumental in bringing ZIP to the company and they worked
very well. Many added ZIPs to their home computers so that data
could be used in the home. I was most grateful that the company
chose to upgrade computers with writeable CD machines. Basically
cus I was gifted all the old internal ZIP drives. Thing about
data storage is that it's only as good as your last data back-up.
So change the back-up system and it renders everything before
redundant.
Thankfully all the ZIP drives still work. I do have an Iomega CD-
Writer which in truth is the biggest load of junk I have ever owned.
ZIP, Ditto, Jumbo Trakker, Accutrak.
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