> The master said, "Do not despair, for yesterday I took one of your backup tapes and posted it to my brother in China. He will return it."

The master should not have done this, even by sea mail, for the very first law of backup is: you will only learn to make proper backups after you suffer a catastrophic loss of data.

Protecting the student from this is depriving him of the only true knowledge, the one that is not merely stored in the head, but burned into the skin.