akhanna@bbn.com (Atul Khanna) (08/21/89)
Any recommendations for hard-disk backup programs, especially those
that support incremental backup?
Thanks.
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Atul C. Khanna <akhanna@alexander.bbn.com>
BBN Communications Corporation
150 CambridgePark Drive
Cambridge, MA 02140
UUCP: {harvard,rutgers,uunet,...}!bbn.com!akhanna
Tel: (617) 873 2531dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch) (08/22/89)
In article <44566@bbn.COM> akhanna@BBN.COM () writes: >Any recommendations for hard-disk backup programs, especially those >that support incremental backup? I use Fastback Plus, and haven't had any serious problems yet. The user interface is a little ugly (menus that don't quite do what you expect, and unconventional ways to move around). It supports 5 or 6 different types of backup - the one I use is called "separate incremental". It lets you save all copies of files. Other incremental ones lose track of earlier versions of files when they back up later ones. Another option doesn't touch the Archive bit on the file, so you can do multiple copies of your incremental backup, or mix and match types. You can also do complete disk backups, with or without touching the Archive bit. It's very fast - with 360K disks I have trouble keeping up with writing and sticking labels on, though 1.2M disks are easier, at about a minute each. It'll format on the fly, which saves a lot of time. It's very incompatible with Desqview, because it gets its speed by low level access to the disk, using the DMA hardware. Doing anything that touches the disk within Desqview (on a 386) brings the system down. It claims to have DOS compatible disk formats, but it's not really true. DOS will be able to read the disk without dying, but it'll only see a volume label and one huge file. You need to have a copy of FB around to recover anything. And I've had problems recycling the disks - they always need to be reformatted before being usable as DOS disks. Not a big deal in either case. They also claim to be doing data compression (if you want), and some kind of redundancy of what they save, so that you can lose a whole track from the floppy without losing any data. I haven't had to test this yet, as far as I know. Hope this has been of some help. Duncan Murdoch
huilin@hpindda.HP.COM (Hui Lin Lim) (08/22/89)
I whole-heartedly recommend Fastback Plus from Fifth Generation
Systems as it works well and is fast. I found the reviews hard
to believe but it really is more convenient to use than most of
the other products. Unfortunately it's also one of the most
expensive utilities especially since it only does backups.
CoreFast and PCTools v5+ are also good (and cheaper)
alternatives.
Usual disclaimers apply.
Hui-Lin Lim
ARPA: huilin%hpinddf@hplabs.hp.com
UUCP: {ucbvax,hplabs}!hpinddf!huilin
Phone: (408)447-2835waldman2@husc8.HARVARD.EDU (Bruce Waldman) (08/23/89)
I have had lots of trouble using Fastback to back up files on my XT and AT clones. The symptoms are: after backing up some number of disks, the terminal hangs, with the light on the floppy drive on but the drive apparently not writing. This happens on all the floppy drives (1.2m, 360k, 1.44 m), so the problem is not a faulty drive. Sometimes this happens during the first diskette write, sometimes after 10 or 15 diskettes have been written. It is totally unpredictable. Unfortunately, i have similar symptoms with PC-FULLBAK, another backup program with a somewhat friendlier interface. Any suggestions on what might be wrong with my PC's?
mlord@bmers58.UUCP (Mark Lord) (08/23/89)
In article <2503@husc6.harvard.edu> waldman2@husc8.UUCP (Bruce Waldman) writes: >I have had lots of trouble using Fastback to back up files >on my XT and AT clones. The symptoms are: after backing up >some number of disks, the terminal hangs, with the light on >the floppy drive on but the drive apparently not writing. >This happens on all the floppy drives (1.2m, 360k, 1.44 m), >so the problem is not a faulty drive. Sometimes this happens >during the first diskette write, sometimes after 10 or 15 >diskettes have been written. It is totally unpredictable. > ... I had an AT clone with exactly these symptoms. Took a while, but I eventually figured out that the floppy controller was "old style" and therefore a bit marginal above 8Mhz (my AT ran at 10 or 6Mhz, switchable). The hard drive controller, on the same card, works flawlessly at either speed. My solution, and suggestion for you, was to only access the floppy drive when in NON-TURBO mode (6mhz for me). by "access", this means reading/writing or even just inserting/removing floppys from the drive. Hope this helps. (btw. the controller was a Western Digital 2:1 MFM 2HD+2FD job). -Mark
paulj@b8.UUCP ( Joey Paul x4129 ) (08/24/89)
In article <2503@husc6.harvard.edu>, waldman2@husc8.HARVARD.EDU (Bruce Waldman) writes: > I have had lots of trouble using Fastback to back up files > on my XT and AT clones. The symptoms are: after backing up > some number of disks, the terminal hangs, with the light on > the floppy drive on but the drive apparently not writing. > This happens on all the floppy drives (1.2m, 360k, 1.44 m), > so the problem is not a faulty drive. Sometimes this happens > during the first diskette write, sometimes after 10 or 15 > diskettes have been written. It is totally unpredictable. > Unfortunately, i have similar symptoms with PC-FULLBAK, > another backup program with a somewhat friendlier interface. > Any suggestions on what might be wrong with my PC's? I've checked problems for 3 different businesses (actually one was a church) who were having problems using Fastback. All three had the same symptoms: XT clones using Fastback were unable to use the backup - Fastback wouldn't restore what it had written and, of course, DOS wouldn't either. Finally wound up reformatting the floppies and doing a backup from DOS so they wouldn't be "up the creek" in case anything happened. No idea why this happened (in three totally separate cases) but from what I've seen I won't use it.
davidr@hplsla.HP.COM (David M. Reed) (08/25/89)
I use Fastback PLUS extensively, and have occasionally experienced this "hung" phenomenon. On several occasions I determined it was defective floppy discs, and getting a fresh set of very high quality discs will allow the program to function properly.
cpcahil@virtech.UUCP (Conor P. Cahill) (08/25/89)
In article <591@b8.UUCP>, paulj@b8.UUCP ( Joey Paul x4129 ) writes: > I've checked problems for 3 different businesses (actually one was a church) > who were having problems using Fastback. All three had the same symptoms: > XT clones using Fastback were unable to use the backup - Fastback wouldn't > restore what it had written and, of course, DOS wouldn't either. Finally > wound up reformatting the floppies and doing a backup from DOS so they > wouldn't be "up the creek" in case anything happened. No idea why this > happened (in three totally separate cases) but from what I've seen I won't > use it. I have used fastback for several years on a multitude of different pc's including 86s, 286s, and 386s. No-name brands, name brands. 1.2Meg floppies, 360K floppies. Etc.... I have had the problem where the formatting code in fastback seems to lock up at an arbitrary point. This only occurs the first time I use a diskette and it occurs about 5% of the time. I have never had it happen on one of it's already formatted diskettes. Even with all the problems I have never had the problem where I was unable to restore the data off of a diskette. Fastback has had a problem reading some of them, but using it's ECC it was able to restore the data anyway. If you are having the problems that you describe, I would guess that you are running into the DMA problem. Fastback installation software tests the DMA to verify that multiple channels can be used at the same time. If this is the problem, then either someone copied in fastbacks *.exes from another system without going through the installation (i.e. fconfig) or you DMA problem is marginal and is not found during configuration. Try using fastback with the /slow argument to force fastback to not use multiple dma channels at the same time. -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Conor P. Cahill uunet!virtech!cpcahil 703-430-9240 ! | Virtual Technologies Inc., P. O. Box 876, Sterling, VA 22170 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
stephen@ziebmef.mef.org (Stephen M. Dunn) (08/28/89)
In article <44566@bbn.COM> akhanna@BBN.COM () writes: >Any recommendations for hard-disk backup programs, especially those >that support incremental backup? One program to think about is PCTools PCBackup. I've been using this program recently and have been quite satisfied by it. (I don't use it for incremental backups, but it does do them ... I just can't comment on how it works. The versino I'm using doesn't do data compression, but the more recent versions do. Be careful, though, the original release of version 5.0 (I think it was 5.0) was kinda buggy ... they've fixed that now. It will format disks as it goes if necessary, formatting only the tracks it needs rather than the whole disk. The next time, if it needs two more tracks, it formats just those two. Its format isn't compatible with DOS, so you have to use PCRestor to restore. PCBackup achieves its speed by running the hard disk and the floppy disk at the same time (i.e. concurrent DMA). If you have two of the same kind of floppy disk, it will allow you to backup to both so that you can swap disks in one drive while it's still writing to the other; this way, you don't lose any time to swapping disks. On my 12 MHz AT with a fast (25 ms) hard drive and a fairly standard 1.2 M floppy, it takes about 30 seconds to back up about 1M of data. STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I have no affiliation with Central Point Software, the producers of the PCTools utilities. I just like their programs. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ! Stephen M. Dunn stephen@ziebmef.UUCP ! DISCLAIMER: Who'd ever ! !---------------------------------------------------! claim such dumb ideas? ! ! I have become comfortably numb ... ! I sure as heck wouldn't !
mhnadel@gryphon.COM (Miriam Nadel) (08/29/89)
In article <1989Aug28.094152.12349@ziebmef.mef.org> stephen@ziebmef.mef.org (Stephen M. Dunn) writes: >In article <44566@bbn.COM> akhanna@BBN.COM () writes: >>Any recommendations for hard-disk backup programs, especially those >>that support incremental backup? > > One program to think about is PCTools PCBackup. I've been using this >program recently and have been quite satisfied by it. (I don't use it for >incremental backups, but it does do them ... I just can't comment >on how it works. > I've used it for incremental backups and found that it works quite well. There are a number of options on how to specify which files to back up. If you specify things like "everything that's changed since such and such a date" it's straightforward; I've seen people have problems trying to figure out how to backup just a few files (though it can be done.) > The versino I'm using doesn't do data compression, but the more recent >versions do. Be careful, though, the original release of version 5.0 (I >think it was 5.0) was kinda buggy ... they've fixed that now. > You need version 5.1 (or higher - I think they're up to 5.3) if you're using DOS 4.01. I would recommend getting it anyway because some of the other utilities that were added are nice. > It will format disks as it goes if necessary, formatting only the tracks >it needs rather than the whole disk. The next time, if it needs two >more tracks, it formats just those two. Its format isn't compatible with >DOS, so you have to use PCRestor to restore. > You can, however, use formatted diskettes and, depending on what parameters you specify, it won't reformat them. As for the format of the backed-up files, it was changed in PCTools 5.x so you have to use the matching version of PCRestore. > PCBackup achieves its speed by running the hard disk and the floppy >disk at the same time (i.e. concurrent DMA). You can turn off concurrent DMA, though I'm not really sure why you'd want to. Overall, PCTools is a nice package. I don't know anyone who has had significant trouble with it. It's also very reasonably priced. Miriam Nadel -- One of the 32% of Americans who like to take chances. mhnadel@gryphon.COM <any backbone site>!gryphon!mhnadel nadel@aspen.aero.org
noelroy@kean.mun.ca (Noel Roy, Economics Dept., Memorial University) (08/30/89)
In article <19248@gryphon.COM>, mhnadel@gryphon.COM (Miriam Nadel) writes: > In article <1989Aug28.094152.12349@ziebmef.mef.org> stephen@ziebmef.mef.org (Stephen M. Dunn) writes: >>In article <44566@bbn.COM> akhanna@BBN.COM () writes: >>>Any recommendations for hard-disk backup programs, especially those >>>that support incremental backup? >> >> One program to think about is PCTools PCBackup. I've been using this >>program recently and have been quite satisfied by it. (I don't use it for >>incremental backups, but it does do them ... I just can't comment >>on how it works. >> > I've used it for incremental backups and found that it works quite well. > There are a number of options on how to specify which files to back up. > If you specify things like "everything that's changed since such and such a > date" it's straightforward; I've seen people have problems trying to figure out > how to backup just a few files (though it can be done.) > Overall, PCTools is a nice package. I don't know anyone who has had > significant trouble with it. It's also very reasonably priced. > > Miriam Nadel > -- > One of the 32% of Americans who like to take chances. > > mhnadel@gryphon.COM <any backbone site>!gryphon!mhnadel nadel@aspen.aero.org While I like PC_Tools very much for total backups, I find the incremental backup facility awkward. The backup.logs are placed on the final diskette of the incremental backup, and apparently cannot be concatenated into a master log file. So, finding a particular file to restore becomes a matter of slipping directory diskettes into the drive until you finally find what you are looking for. Or am I missing something here? _________________________________________________________________________ | | | Dr. Noel Roy | | Room A3048 Phone (709) 737-8245/8 | | Department of Economics FAX (709) 737-4569 | | Memorial University of Newfoundland | | St. John's, Newfoundland A1C 5S7 Canada | |-----------------------------------------------------------------------| | bitnet: NOELROY@MUN | | internet: noelroy%kean.mun.ca@CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu | | cdnnet: noelroy@kean.mun.cdn | | uunet: noelroy@munucs.UUCP | | o o | | icbmnet: lat 47 34'6"N long 52 44'8"W alt 69m | |_______________________________________________________________________|
bk@kullmar.se (Bo Kullmar) (09/02/89)
mhnadel@gryphon.COM (Miriam Nadel) writes: >You can turn off concurrent DMA, though I'm not really sure why you'd want to. DMA access does not work on IBM PS/2 model 70. The last version that I tried DMA access on the 70 was version 5.50. If it is not possible to turn of the DMA access PCBackup can not be used on the PS/2 model 70! --- Bo Kullmar, Helsingoersg. 38, S-164 42 KISTA, Sweden, Phone +46 8 7511518 UUCP: {uunet,mcvax,munnari,cernvax,diku,inria,prlb2,tut,ukc,unido} !sunic!kullmar!bk Internet: bk@kullmar.se
lsheldon@cup.portal.com (Laurence Larry Sheldon) (09/03/89)
I don't eant to turn this into a testimonial frenzy, but I would like to off-set some of the anti-FastBack flavor back up-stream. I've used FB and FB+ and have had zero trouble with reliability. (Some of the human interface is poor, and they lost some functionality going to plus. (plus is minus [^;|) I have on several occasions low-level prepped a disc and reloaded--no sweat. No known failures--this om a ZTS XTclone, a ZTS ATclone, and a COMPAQ 286 something or other.
mstupak@mentor.com (Mike Stupak) (05/26/90)
I have a Packard Bell 386SX running on MSdos 3.3 with a 40 meg. hard
drive and I would like to know people's experience with different
backup programs (back up to floppies). It would be nice to have something
that did file compression, incremental backups, incremental restores,
and be fairly user friendly (it's really for my dad and he's not a real
hacker). Another limitation is $$$ as usual. Sorry if this is an old
thread. I will post or e-mail results if people express interest.
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\/__/ \/__/ \/__/ \/__/ \__\ \/____/ \/____/ \/_/ (opinions are mine)jm21@prism.gatech.EDU (Jim Marks) (05/26/90)
In article <1990May25.191547.912@mentor.com> mstupak@mentor.com (Mike Stupak) writes: >I have a Packard Bell 386SX running on MSdos 3.3 with a 40 meg. hard >drive and I would like to know people's experience with different >backup programs (back up to floppies). It would be nice to have something >that did file compression, incremental backups, incremental restores, ... I like Fastback for this. Several of us here at work (the ones who DO regular backups) use it. Its menu-driven and is pretty easy to use, even without reading the instructions. It allows full backups as well as incre- mental (backup only files with archive bit set and reset the bit), and "differential" (same as incremental, but don't reset the bit). You can also specifically include or exclude files or whole directories. It does do pretty good compression and really is fast. I will say that the only other backup I've used is the regular MS-DOS BACKUP, and compared to it most anything looks good. Fastback isn't real cheap, but if you've got data that you consider import- ant, its a good way to go. It's easy and fast enough so that you'll probably do your backups as often as you should (which you probably won't with slower, harder-to-use programs). -- Jim Marks (404)894-7255 Georgia Tech Research Institute SEL/CAD Internet: jm21@prism.gatech.edu Compuserve: 72310,2410
kperson@plains.UUCP (Kerry Person) (05/26/90)
Just yesterday, I used FastBack Plus to backup the 42 meg of files on my 67 meg hard drive to high density 5-1/4" floppies. It took 26 disks, and about 20 minutes. I was in the process of reformatting my hard drive, so after doing that, I restored all the data to the hard drive. This took about 1/2 hour. For the backup stage, FastBack Plus allows you to turn compression on or off (I had it turned on and stored an average of 1.58 meg of data per 1.2 meg floppy), and send the output to 5-1/4" or 3-1/2" drives (high or double density) or a file path. You can selectively back up files within a date range, files with a certain archive attribute, new files since last backup, or all files. You can selectively include and exclude specific files, directories, and subdirectories. You can either type in the name of what you want to include or exclude, or you can just tag files on a directory tree that you can call up in a window. Very user friendly. There are several steps to go through the first time you use it, but if you are satisfied with that initial setup, you can save it, and the next time you just have to hit Start and go from there. The only thing I can think of that FastBack doesn't have that I think would be nice is support for a tape drive. There may be a way to fool it into thinking that a tape drive is a file path, but I don't know about that. I don't have a tape drive, so speaking for myself, FastBack Plus does everything I need it to do. Kerry Person (kperson@plains.nodak.edu) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - "I'm not an accordion; I just play one on TV." - Myron Florian - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------