03/18/96 BYE-BYE, BACKUP FLOPPIES

BYE-BYE, BACKUP FLOPPIES

BACK UP YOUR PROGRAMS and your data. Yeah, yeah. Computer managers are always nagging employees to copy their work so they can survive a hard-disk failure. But copying the megabytes of data and programs onto a digital tape--or, worse yet, zillions of floppy diskettes--is so tediously time-consuming that few people heed the advice. On Mar. 4 Compaq Computer, Matsushita Electric Industrial's MKE Div. and 3M introduced a quick and easy-to-use floppy drive and new disk media that they say will take the dreariness out of backups.
The trio have developed a drive and diskette that look and work like traditional 3.5-inch floppies but can store 120 megabytes, compared with the 1.44 MB of standard diskettes. The LS-120 drive employs laser-encoded ``reference'' tracks to allow the drive to read and write nearly 2,500 tracks per inch, compared with 135 tracks per inch on standard magnetic media. And since the drive spins the disks faster than a standard 3.5-in. drive, backing up data takes much less time. The drive also handles ordinary 3.5-in. floppies. In April, the LS-120 will become a standard feature on some models of the Compaq DeskPro XL line of PCs, which are geared toward corporate customers. An add-in version of the LS drive is expected to retail for $210, with diskettes expected to cost around $20 apiece.
EDITED BY PAUL M. ENG