[comp.sys.mac.misc] Need advice about DiskFit

jesse@cs.UAlberta.CA (Jesse Lee) (06/10/91)

I have been using SUM II BackUp (Version 2.0) for a long time.
The reason I am still using it is whenever I do incremental backup,
it only modifies the original backup set. This makes restoring the
hard disk easier. (Some other backup programs will produce several
incremental backup sets. So when you have to restore the hard disk
using the full backup set and the incremental backup sets,
some programs/documents which have been deleted for a long time will still be
present. What I do not really like is these backup programs cannot
remember you have moved an application or a document to somewhere.
So when you restore an entire hard disk, you end up with duplicated
programs/documents. Cleaning up these files must be done manually.
It may take a lot of time if you delete/move a lot of files.)
I am still not very satisfied with SUM II BackUp because whenever I
do incremental backup, it increases the number of disks of the backup
sets. The size of my hard disk is rather constant. How come it cannot
optimize the number of disks? For example, I have about 30MB files,
when I did a full backup, it took 42 800k disks. Since then I have
not added any new application and the size of my hard disk is less
than before. When I did another incremental backup this morning, 
it asked me for 6 more 800k disks. How come it is so not intelligent?

I heard that DiskFit is another backup program which does similiar
thing like SUM II BackUp. How intelligent is this program? If the
size of my hard disk is more or less constant, will the number
of disks of the backup set be more or less constant?

Thanks in advance.

				Jesse Lee


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Jesse Lee			  | UUCP:     jesse@alberta.uucp
Department of Computing Science   | Internet: jesse@cs.ualberta.ca
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta 
Canada T6G 2H1
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rlancast@bgsuvax.UUCP (Ron Lancaster) (06/10/91)

In article <jesse.676496774@steele-lk>, jesse@cs.UAlberta.CA (Jesse Lee) writes:
> I heard that DiskFit is another backup program which does similiar
> thing like SUM II BackUp. How intelligent is this program? If the
> size of my hard disk is more or less constant, will the number
> of disks of the backup set be more or less constant?

I have been fairly impressed by DiskFit.  It is very good about reusing
available space on a floppy.  Another advantage: it works just fine under
System 7.0.

In spite of the fact that I have been a satisfied user since this package
came out, it did something last week that even surprised me!  I use the
option which has the program verify writes (to ensure there are no bad
spots on the backup disk).  It found a problem on a disk I had been using
and asked for a new disk.  The bad disk was 800K but I inserted a high
density disk to replace it.  Even though the backup was more than halfway
finished, it filled the high density disk instead of asking for a new
disk to be added to the set (as it would have done otherwise).  (It tells
you when the backup is started whether it will need additional disks and,
if so, how many.  After getting a larger backup disk, it changed its mind
about needing an additional disk.)