CatalogueWhat you know15 of 36
What happens after somebody deletes the wrong thing
Copies taken on a schedule rather than when somebody remembers, earlier versions of your writing kept, and a way back that is a job for a person rather than a button.
What arrives
- Copies taken
- on a schedule, rather than when somebody remembers to
- Earlier versions
- of your writing and pictures, so a bad change is undone rather than retyped
- How far back
- they reach, agreed with you at the start and written down
- Coming back
- is work for a person, and on a business your size it is an afternoon
- Whatever changed
- after the last copy, which is gone
The two ways it actually goes wrong#
One is dramatic and rare - hardware, fire, something you would read about. The other is ordinary and constant: somebody deletes the wrong record, or overwrites a page with a half-finished draft, or makes a change that seemed small and turns out to have been holding something up.
The second is what copies are really for, and it is why earlier versions of the writing are kept alongside copies of the whole thing. Undoing a bad paragraph should not require restoring a business.
How far back, and how long it takes to come back#
How far back the copies reach is a decision rather than a default, so it is agreed at the start and written down where you can read it. It is worth five minutes of your attention once, because it is the number you will care about on exactly one day.
Coming back is work for a person. On a business your size it is an afternoon rather than a fortnight, and it is not a button - somebody has to decide to do it and then do it properly rather than quickly.
A copy nobody has ever restored is a hope rather than a backup. The only way to know that one works is to bring it back on a day when nothing depends on it.
What a copy cannot give you back#
A copy is only as recent as the last one taken. Whatever changed after it - the order, the message, the record somebody updated at four o'clock - is not in it, and no arrangement of copies makes that gap nothing. It is small and it is real, and it is better read here than discovered on the day.