alex@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Alex Pournelle) (07/26/90)
jwright@cfht.hawaii.edu (Jim Wright) writes: >On that elusive search for a good network backup program... >We called Fifth Generation about FastBack II, and this is what I use F-B II Version 2.10 (latest, as far as I know; Jan 90 version) a great deal, and have some problems. It, for no discernible reason, locks up while backing up, either to tape or floppy, occasionally. Admittedly, I have a large drive (210M used of 330M), but I'm under single-finder 6.0.3/6.0 with Desktop Manager. Has anyone else tracked this down more? Should I upgrade to 6.0.5? I'm rather disgruntled by several other features (or not) of F-B and thought I'd ask other's opinions: --If you have a jumbo-full drive with >6,000 files on it (sigh), it takes about ten minutes to scan the directory, and you cannot abort the filename scan halfway through 'n' keep those already scanned. --I can't make it work with the Teac 60 Mbyte SCSI external tape drive. It formats & erases tapes OK, but then bombs out with an error "unable to write to tape correctly" after trying to actually back up for a while. --Compression is worse than useless: it's <10% efficient, and takes *three times* longer on my Plus. --Backup performance in background under MultiFinder (which I no longer call MultiCrasher: 6.1B9 is *really stable*) is jerky, slow and generally obnoxious. --One cannot 2clik on a folder in Backup File Choose and have it choose all subfolders. Grr. Nor does this view give you a total backup size. Comments? Alex P.S. Comments from Retrospect users are welcome; I don't have a copy to compare. Besides, when I back up people's systems, F-B seems by far the more popular (not to say reliable) choice. SUM Backup seems most reliable, but it won't back up by folder name. -- Alex Pournelle, freelance thinker Also: Workman & Associates, Data recovery for PCs, Macs, others ...elroy!grian!alex; BIX: alex; voice: (818) 791-7979 fax: (818) 794-2297 bbs: 791-1013; 8N1 24/12/3
carlo@eagle.cvs.rochester.edu (Carlo Tiana) (07/27/90)
Here I was, about to post to ask which backup software people are using, and I come across an article like this. And I thought FastBackII was one of the good ones! I know this question is a tough one, and a lot is probably up to personal preference, but any views would be welcome. If the dfefinitive summary of features and likes/dislikes already exists, could someone please mail it to me? If not, e-mail me all your views (gasp!) and I will summarize! BTW: my setup is a IIci with 210Mb drive; I would like to do full backups to Syquest cartridges and incrementals to HD floppies. Does this sound reasonable? Thank you in advance for all your replies/comments! Carlo. carlo@cvs.rochester.edu
baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) (07/31/90)
In article <1990Jul26.083232.14547@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us>, alex@grian (Alex Pournelle) writes: >P.S. Comments from Retrospect users are welcome; I don't have a copy to >compare. Besides, when I back up people's systems, F-B seems by far the >more popular (not to say reliable) choice. SUM Backup seems most >reliable, but it won't back up by folder name. I switched from FB to Retrospect and am very happy that I did. I, too, suffered from occasional crashes in FastBack (running under Finder with no INITs, so INIT conflicts certainly weren't the problem), both while backing up and restoring. Crashing while restoring was unsettling, to say the least... :-( Retrospect is a pleasure to use, and has the additional benefit of allowing true archiving, not just backing up. FB has no notion of multiple archives; in fact, the program seems to be designed so that there is no way of maintaining multiple archives for a single volume. Retrospect is not without problems, though. Its user interface for selecting certain files but not others is certainly not intuitive, though it can be learned. And it handles file verification (reading back the backup and comparing to the source) in a very safe, but time consuming way for floppies, since in all cases it starts at the beginning of the backup session and reads back each file in turn. Makes sense for tapes, certainly, but not really for floppies. Also, certain operations are a tad slow on a Plus, but acceptable. Scanning an archive and matching files (to see which need to be backed up) can take a while on a Plus if you have a large disk. Window updating is also a little sluggish on a Plus. But it seems rock solid and very flexible, and works very nicely under Multifinder. I don't regret for a minute switching from FastBack. -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." baumgart@esquire.dpw.com | cmcl2!esquire!baumgart | - David Letterman
jacob@latcs1.oz.au (Jacob L. Cybulski) (08/02/90)
Hey, more people unhappy about Fastback II. Once I was a very happy user of Fastback I which was supplied with free of charge with my Rodime drive, then I saw Fastback II. No I decided not to upgrade - the new version is a real step backwards, I could not make a successful recovery from the backup I took as a test. The result of this is that I am still a happy user of Fastback I. Jacob P.S. I wonder how hany people TRY to RECOVER their data as a test, have you ever tried it with your backup program? Just wait until your drive is gone, he he he...
alex@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Alex Pournelle) (08/02/90)
carlo@eagle.cvs.rochester.edu (Carlo Tiana) writes: >Here I was, about to post to ask which backup software people are using, >and I come across an article like this. And I thought FastBackII was one of >the good ones! Don't get me wrong, I like F-B II quite a bit. It has these few problems, but it certainly fills the bill for data-storage, safely. And it doesn't lose that data, ever, that I can find. So don't immediately knock it off the list. Alex -- Alex Pournelle, freelance thinker Also: Workman & Associates, Data recovery for PCs, Macs, others ...elroy!grian!alex; BIX: alex; voice: (818) 791-7979 fax: (818) 794-2297 bbs: 791-1013; 8N1 24/12/3
DARWEES@gecrdvm1.crd.ge.com (08/02/90)
I too am VERY disappointed with FastBack II. I lost one file and one folder's worth of files when restoring. The interface is poor an unintuitive as well. I received Fastback I with my Rodime HD and was really looking forward to versi on II. Boy am I glad I didn't spend my money. If I use Stuffit and segment my archives, I can get a better backup. -Mike Darweesh