Listening to Alan Ivey, the system administrator for EchoDitto, describe server monitoring, master/slave redundancy, crawler lockouts, and all the other very cool things he has set up to ensure the security of client sites and data, I was reminded of my first important lesson about computers: have good backups.

It was long ago in the days of DOS, dual floppies, and black and white monitors. I used a dedicated word processor at work (Is there another living person who remembers the IBM Displaywriter?), but hadn’t yet ventured into the world of the PC although there were a couple of them around the house.

“Don’t worry, you can’t do anything to it,” I was told.

So I began, just as I always did at work.

C:\>

I entered the Displaywriter command to begin a new document…

C:\> format

"Are you sure you want to do proceed?"

Well, of course.

“Don’t worry, you can’t do anything to it.” Famous last words.

I had wiped the hard drive because “format” meant something completely different to a PC. Luckily, everything was backed up and – although it took disk after disk after disk and lots and lots of time – restoring the system was possible.

We learned something that day. Never assume that it can’t be broken...and always have good backups.