FOR THE CAUTIOUS USERThis section takes you step-by-step through atypical sessionof backup and restoration of volumes, folders, and files. Actualscreen graphics are shown, and they are accompanied bycomplete explanations of what your choices are, how to decidewhat to do, and exactly how to do it.After a time or two of following this section, you'll become socomfortable with Salvation's intuitive format-pius its many onscreenprompts and messages-that you'll probably never refer tothis section of the User's Guide again.However...We rec9mmend that you read this section and examinethe screen graphics once before you actually perform anySalvation backup or restore operations. This gives us thechance to explain what's going on at every step, and lets youdecide how it may (or may not) apply to your personalllGs system.Then, when you try Salvation for a real backup, YOU'll go quicklyand confidently through the process...and you'll be assured thatyour irreplaceable files are completely protected everywhere alongthe line.
What Is a Backup...and Why Bother?As personal computer technology has exploded in the lastfew years, IIGS users have been able to store files in bigger andbigger devices. While the standard in the Apple II world was oncethe 5-1/4" floppy disk that holds only 143K bytes of file data, mostIIGS users now use 3-1/2" disks that can hold up to 800K worth offiles-more than six times as muchI Beyond that, many IIGS usersare using hard disk drives; even the smallest of these can store10 megabytes of data: over twelve times as much as a 3-1/2" disk.And it's not unusual for users' systems to have hard drives thatcan hold 20 megabytes, 40 megabytes-or even more-of file data.If the world were a perfect place, and if electromechanicaldevices-and humans-always worked flawlessly, you wouldn'tneed Salvation. You would just save data onto floppy disks or harddrives and use them as often as desired. But, even the bestmachines and humans have problems every now and then. In thecomputer world, that means that every IIGS user is going to have atleast one experience of trying to read data to or from a floppy diskor hard drive...and it won't work!!What Causes These Errors?The reason it won't work can stem from a number of causes,among them a misplaced or missing byte that's crucial tooperation-every now and then a disk or hard drive can hiccup.Even more common is the situation where a user changes a fileand saves it to a disk...only to realize (too late) that the earlierversion should have been kept, too. The idea of a backup of files isto keep a separate copy of a group of data, so that when thatinevitable "Oh, NO!" occurs, it's an easy job to just go to thebackup copy and begin to breathe again."OK", you say, "I can just use my file management utilityprogram to make c; copy of all the fi,les I ~ave...can:t.I?" you canbutcopying each file one-by-one With a file copy utility will take along time, and the large number of disks (or hard drive space)needed will be quite disorganized. Salvation allows you to organizeyour data and speed up the backup process. And the faster abackup process goes, the more likely you are to use it.How Does Salvation Save Time and Storage Space?Salvation is written to read and write files at absolutemaximum speed-many times faster than a file copy utility. It canstore groups of files in a logical way to ease the task of restoringthem when the time comes. Salvation uses the IIGS' powerfuldesktop user interface to show you clearly the files you have, allowyou select which of them you want to back up and where thebackup is to be stored. It then makes the backup quickly andwithout errors...all controlled by you in the convenient 'point andclick' menu/mouse method of running IIGS programs.You save time many ways with Salvation: you can use themouse to select whole volumes', certain folders on volumes, oreven some files from one folder and other files from anotherfolder-there's no need to type in any filenames.Salvation tells you ahead of time the number of disks-or theamount of hard drive space-you'll need available to receivebackup files. You can use new, unformatted disks or older,formatted ones-Salvation handles both easily, so all you need todo is have enough disks within arm's reach.When the time comes to write the backup files, Salvationwrites a whole track at a time; depending on your particularsystem, this can be as fast as 1 megabyte per minute!This level ofperformance comes only when your system has 'top ofthe line' components. For instance, one I/Gs-compatible hard drivewith short access times backing up files to another hard drive canachieve 1megabyte perminute rates. Ifyour system uses a fairlyslow hard drive or a 3-1/2" floppy disk drive, the speed may not beas great. Please note especially that 5-1/4" floppy disk drives readand write quite slowly, compared to 3-1/2" drives. You'll notice asignificant increase in the amount oftime Salvation needs to do abackup ifyou use 5-1/4" floppy disks.Salvation writes a special file-called a Catalog <strong>File</strong>-on aseparate disk after a backup session. This file makes it a simple'point and click' process to restore all the files you backed up; or,you can choose to restore just a few files, or even a single file, ifyou want. Salvation's ability to show you on-screen what you'vebacked up, and its flexibility in allowing you to restore all or justparts of it, is an exclusive feature that takes almost all the sting outof those "Oh, NO!" situations.
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