bernard@piper.colorado.edu (Bernie Bernstein) (04/14/90)
I am about to do something about backing up my office mac. (Mac II, 5Mb,
150MB Wren (Gigacell systems, now defunct?) HD. I had been backing
it up to floppies, but I would like to get some better backup device for
it. I would appreciate any feedback, especially from those who use some
of the alternatives listed below.
1. Backup on DC2000 tape from Suns on network. (Is there any way to do
this?) This would be the least expensive approach since we
already have suns with tape drives. I will not want to waste
150 meg on their disks however. Is there any way to backup
directly to the tape drive without putting everything on the Sun
first? We are connected through a Gatorbox.
2. Teac 155 Meg Tape Drive
~$750 w/Retrospect + $35 per tape * 1 tape for complete backup.
Total: $785 for one complete backup
This will allow unattended backups for a low price, but it will
be slow
3. Syquest 45 Meg removable HD
~$700 + $150 Retrospect + ($80 per disk * (3 or 4))
Total: $1090 or $1170 for one complete backup
This will give speed and versatility, but I can't do unattended
backups and it will cost the most.
Are there any other alternatives for under $1500? I would like to
hear some suggestions or further justification of any of the ideas
given here. If you see any important flaws in any of these methods,
please let me know.
o, ,, , | Bernie Bernstein | , ,,
L>O/ \,/ \ ,| University of Colorado at boulder |/ \,,/ \
O./ ' / . `, / | office: (303) 492-8136 | / ` \ ,.
,/ / , ' | email: bernard@boulder.colorado.edu | / '' \drew@cup.portal.com (Andrew E Wade) (04/15/90)
Re: backing up your mac via Gatorbox to Sun-based tape. I know of two programs that do this: Fastback II and Retrospect. I've purchased and tried both, prefer and use retrospect, but still have some stability problems. Since we have a backup scheme on our suns/etc. net (daily, weekly, monthly, incremental and full), all I want is incremental from mac to sun. Fastback doesn't have that; it keeps adding newer copies of files and the disk used on server(sun) grows and grows until you manually go and delete it to start over. Retrospect isn't smart enough to back up only latest version of file, but it has a simple work-around: you can limit the size of the backup file on the server (in either bytes or "sessions"=number of backup runs), after which it erases the backup file and start over. So, I set it to run to two backup files alternately (MWF and TuThSa), with each set to reset itself twice a month, with one resetting at start of month, other at mid-month. In that way, even if disaster strikes just after one resets itself, the other is available, at most a day out of date. Also, I like unattended backup. Fastback doesn't really have that, because you must leave the application (fastback, >1MB) running for it's auto-scheduler to kick in. Retrospect does have it, via an INIT that will automatically launch retrospect at scheduled days/times (e.g., middle of the night). Works great. Other programs I've tried (Redux, SUMII, etc.) do not work to server. There are a couple that I didn't try, and might work (I've forgotten the names, but they have "net" in them, which is encouraging), but when I called customer support for them, they didn't understand what I wanted to do -- seemed to be thinking only of tapes and macintosh servers -- so I chose not to spend the money to try them. Minor quibbles: Retrospect's user interface is better than fastback's, but not as good as redux's. It's sometimes confusing, in retrospect, whether your choices of which files to back up will be saved (in the "script" for unattended backup) or not -- strange things need to be done to ensure that. Not terrible, but... Major quibble: I don't know if this is just me, but I do have problems with Retrospect occasionally hanging. (It was worse with fastback!) I really don't know why, but the symptoms (hangs immediately on trying to open backup file on server, with appletalk arrows frozen in upper left corner of screen) suggest a network problem. I've seen it only when backing up to server through gatorbox, and not when backing up locally. This seems to happen about once a week. I've reported this to makers of both Retropsect and Gatorbox and they are both trying to be helpful. In the meantime, I have developed the following work-arounds, which are important because sometimes rebooting from these hang-ups can damage disk to the point that Disk First Aid can't fix it, and I have to reformat. First, I've turned off ram cache. I'm guessing that cached disk directory structures that aren't posted to disk when I push the restart button after a hang could cause the corruption, or make it more likely to happen or worse when it does happen. Second, I've saved a copy of retro.prep, and whenever crash occurs, I copy a clean one. This file is created automatically in the system folder by retrospect and contains your configuration junk (scripts, calendar, etc.). So, again, I start fresh (trash any previous copy), create scripts, calendar for unattended backup, set preferences, etc., and then, without actually doing a backup, quit immediately and copy retro.prep so I know I have a good copy. It seems that crashes often corrupt the retro.prep file, causing further crashes/hang-ups. I suspect that the combination of these two things may significantly reduce my crashes/hang-ups, but I don't yet have enough data to be sure. Another point: backing up to across the network, while *much* faster than floppies, is *much* slower than backing up to daisy-chained scsi hard disk. If you can afford the latter, it's nice. Now, if backup occurs in middle of night, maybe you don't care, but once you get several macs on the net, and other things happening on the net, ... Also, I'd recommend backing up only what you need to backup, not the standard system and application stuff, which can be over half the disk space on typical macs. We maintain standard System and Applications Folders for all macs on the net, so only need to back up those once. Good luck. -Drew Wade drew@objy.com