[comp.sys.amiga] The Trouble with TurboBackupV1.0

plouff@nac.dec.com (Wes Plouff) (12/16/88)

Just a day or two ago, the TurboBackup V1.0, a fast disk copy program,
came over comp.binaries.amiga.  I'd like to put out a caution to anyone
who uses it. 

The normal diskcopy command (from CLI) makes diskettes which differ,
even though they have the same name.  (Is this "magic cookie" the
creation date?)  Both the original and copy can coexist under AmigaDOS. 

TurboBackup makes _identical_ copies of diskettes.  AmigaDOS can't tell
them apart, and the machine _will_ freeze or guru if two TB'ed disks, or
original and TB'ed copy, are in the drives at the same time.  In my
opinion, this is a big shortcoming.  Imagine, say, making a backup copy
with TB, then later wanting to restore a corrupted file on the original
disk.  Boom -- guru city. 

The document file does clearly state this, but it's down in the fine
print. 

Conclusion:  If you make copies using TurboBackup, you can use either
the original or the copy, but never use both at the same time.  

-- 
Wes Plouff, Digital Equipment Corp, Littleton, Mass.
plouff%nac.dec@decwrl.dec.com

"[Both Andrew] Grove and [Bill] Gates love the fact that it's called 
`the IBM PC,' and they just collect monopoly profits on Intel chips and 
DOS and OS/2 software." -- Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems