I was once a victim. I’m sure most of you are. Almost all of my immediate friends have lost valuable data because they did not back up.

“Smart is the man who saves, but wise is the man who backs up”.

In this article, I will try to present to you a short history of backup, from little-known punch cards in the “Jurassic” era of computing to wonderful marvels of technology like network technologies with complex systems for remote backup storage.

More after the jump.

You might never believe it but in the old days, backups were done on magnetic tape and even paper. But that’s a thing of the past. Today’s modern PC does not even use the floppy disks of the 80s. Now, backup is done via optical drives and even network storage systems.

But let’s stroll back to computing memory lane and examine the milestones of each.

• Punch Cards – (1951) all data in computing is composed of 1’s and 0’s. Punch cards basically have holes that designate the difference. Maxim Yurin, in his article, writes “punch cards can be considered as the first data storage devices for backup. Of course, we can’t talk about holistic and centralized backup methods and strategies when it comes to punch card backups. But they essentially correspond to the definition of backup given in the beginning, because the additional copies of punch cards were made also to restore data in case of a loss.”
• Magnetic Devices – in the 1960’s, a better alternative to paper (above) was discovered. Magnetic tape could hold more than their paper cousins. Thus was born magnetic tape backup. It is still being used to this day.
• Floppy Disks – while all the rage in the 70s and 80s, the floppy eventually gave way to CDs during the 90’s and the turn of the century.
• Hard Drives – the first HDD was introduced in 1956 by IBM. Since then, storage capacity has increased exponentially over the years. Today, all computers feature hard disks. Storage continues to increase while costs continue to become cheaper.
• CD RW and DVD – optical disks were cheap to produce and had more space. That’s the reason they are so popular today and even replaced the floppies of old. Now, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are the powerful “big brothers” of CD and DVD. Expect them to be mainstream soon.
• Network backup – in layman’s terms, here are the types of network storage and services for backup
  • Local Area Networks (LAN):  high-speed links between several large central computers at one site.
  • File Transfer Protocol (FTP): connects two computers over the Internet so that users can transfer files from one machine to another and perform file commands remotely.
  • Network Attached Storage (NAS): are device designed to be attached to traditional data network.
  • Storage Area Network (SAN) is a network designed to attach computer storage devices such as disk array controllers and tape libraries to servers.

For more detailed information on the History of Backup, I would recommend that you continue your reading at this URL:

http://www.backuphistory.com/

Thanks and I hope you learned something new today!

GM T