[comp.sys.ibm.pc] WARNING? Will FASTBACK corrupt your hard disk?

gjh@dale.UUCP (12/04/87)

Distribution:na

I have been a user of Fastback reliably for some time now on AT&T 6300's
and Kaypro PC computers.  I am a satisfied user on my home machine.  I have
backed up and restored files using Fastback through numerous DOS upgrades, 
partitioning schemes, etc.  I have also physically scraped backup disks 
with metalic objects and still experienced flawless data recovery.  

I had to respond.  I am responsible for maintaining a number of different
machines running.  Post-mortems on data errors has been difficult for me,
and I would want pretty good evidence of product or part failure before I 
would want to warn others.  Of course, your mileage may vary. 

I am in no way associated with Fifth Generation and have no interest in 
the fortunes of Fastback.  I am simply a satisfied customer.


-- 
"He is not rowing with a full deck of cards"            gjh@virginia.UUCP
Galen Hekhuis, UVa Medical Center                     gjh@virginia.BITNET
Box 449, Jordan MEB, Charlottesville, VA 22908             (804) 924-0172

madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost) (12/05/87)

In article <210@dale.acc.virginia.edu> gjh@dale.UUCP (Galen Hekhuis) writes:
>I have been a user of Fastback reliably for some time now on AT&T 6300's
>and Kaypro PC computers.  I am a satisfied user on my home machine.  I have
>backed up and restored files using Fastback through numerous DOS upgrades, 
>partitioning schemes, etc.  I have also physically scraped backup disks 
>with metalic objects and still experienced flawless data recovery.  
>
>I had to respond.  I am responsible for maintaining a number of different
>machines running.  Post-mortems on data errors has been difficult for me,
>and I would want pretty good evidence of product or part failure before I 
>would want to warn others.  Of course, your mileage may vary. 

I wish that the original sender had included the version of Fastback
that he was using.  It would have made life easier.

The company I work for, at my request, uses Fastback version 5.13 for
all of their backups.  We run a true-blue IBM AT with original
controller and an 85Mb (unformatted) Micropolis drive, set up for one
partition using Golden Bow Systems' VFeature software.

We have never had a problem with Fastback and have been quite happy
with its performance and reliability.  Even using junk disks the
program runs like a charm.

I am aware of problems with earlier versions, however.  The first
problem I had with them is that they were copy protected.  I don't use
backup software that can't be backed up.  I hear rumors that some of
the 4.x versions barfed if the disk had an error on track 0.  Fastback
would report the error and continue but the disk would be unreadable.
We never had this error so I assume it's fixed by version 5.13.

I also hear that new versions will be DOS readable, an interesting
change.

Me, I'm happy with the product.

>I am in no way associated with Fifth Generation and have no interest in 
>the fortunes of Fastback.  I am simply a satisfied customer.

Ditto.

jim frost
madd@bu-it.bu.edu