The great data round-up - desktop publishing - includes related article on The Gap Inc

Communication World, Nov, 1990 by Ron Shewchuk

THE GREAT DATA ROUND-UP

A decade ago, 20-megabyte hard drives were used in mainframe computer systems as a mass storage device. They were the size of a washing machine, needed to be water cooled, and sounded like a freight train.

Today, it's commonplace for personal computers to have 40-megabyte internal hard drives that take up about no more space than a stack of pancakes. A 40-megabyte drive can hold the equivalent of 40,000 typewritten pages of information.

Ironically, that's often not enough for many desktop publishers. What may have seemed a vast and limitless place to store one's files has now become a crowded, cluttered irritation. One of the most pressing challenges for today's corporate communicator is finding a simple, easy, organized way of storing computer files.

To further complicate matters, there are several kinds of storage needs. First, there is on-line storage for the user's day-to-day work. Then comes backup, the important and often neglected task of storing copies of current files to avoid the heartache of losing work in progress. And finally, computer users need a convenient way of archiving completed projects for future reference.

Hard Drives Are Standard Equipment

Gone are the days when all one needed was one or two 5-1/4- or 3-1/2- inch floppy drives and a handful of disks to work on and store word processing or database files. Today, almost all users of Macintosh or PC-based systems use hard drives with storage capability of 20 to 80 megabytes for day-to-day work, using floppy disks for transporting, backup and archiving.

DeVon Sumbrennan, technical communicator for Valtek Incorporated in Springville, Utah, uses a PC with an 80-megabyte hard drive for word processing and desktop publishing.

"I rough everything out on the hard drive, and then we save everything on floppies so we can transfer the data to our graphic artist, who uses a Mac," says Sumbrennan. Because work in progress is transferred from machine to machine, it's important to maintain an organized tracking system. "Keep organized to find it later," he advises. "It's a bummer to have to type in the data again, especially if it's pages and pages of numbers. . . . You have to be conscientious to record what is on each disk."

Simple Storage Solutions

Simple advice, but how many of us take a systematic approach to storing files on floppies? Linnea Dayton, managing editor of Step-By-Step Electronic Design, a newsletter for desktop publishers, says the standard floppy is still the medium of choice for file storage. "It's inexpensive, durable and compact."

Dayton also stresses the importance of organization, and recommends a numerical system for keeping track of files. Disks are numbered as they are filled up, and stored in numerical order with a listing of files written on the outside of each disk. To make life easy, critical information about the files on each disk is keyed into a word processing or database program with sorting and searching capabilities. In addition to the disk number and file names, key words are also included that might help find the job if the file name is forgotten. To find an archived job, Dayton uses the search function to locate the information she needs, and then it's a simple matter to find the numbered disk.

Floppy disks may indeed be the simplest and most economical form of file storage, but publications created using desktop publishing software often take up more room than a regular disk will hold. One solution is to use compression software, which condenses the data and can split it into disk-sized pieces. TIFF format scanned images, which can take up enormous amounts of disk space, can be reduced in size by as much as 90 percent using programs such as Stuffit Deluxe for the Macintosh and ARC for PCs. Data compression software can be found on most on-line bulletin boards and through many software dealers, and usually costs less than US $50.

The New Hardware Solution

The other solution is to buy new data storage hardware, which comes in a mind-boggling number of formats, including tape backup systems, high-capacity removable disks, WORM (Write Once, Read Many) drives and erasable optical drives.

Lisa Snyder-Stone, communication coordinator for the Kaiser Permanente medical group in Oakland, Calif., has used an Apple tape backup system with her Macintosh using magnetic tape cartridges that each hold up to 40 megabytes of data.

"To keep large documents for longterm storage or even for backup takes a whole lot of diskettes, where instead I can put it all on one tape," says Snyder-Stone. "If you're using diskettes, every three minutes you have to put in another one. With a tape system, you can start the backup, go for lunch, make a few phone calls or do something else."

She says the purchase of hardware to save time is well worth the cost. "Most equipment is much cheaper than a professional's time. It isn't necessary for everyone doing four-page newsletters, but for people who work with large documents, some high-speed, high-capacity backup is essential. It just doesn't make any sense to do anything else."