ndh@stl.stc.co.uk (Neale D Hind ) (02/14/91)
Thanks to those who posted a reply or emailed me about problems with
PCBACKUP. This is a summary of my findings.
1. Make sure you have an up to date version.
The latest version should be dated 1-Nov-90 time 6.05 (I assume
the version number). My troublesome copy was 2-May-90 6.03.
The new version (provided promptly and free by Central Point) comes
with CPBACKUP which is the version also sold separately.
2. The earlier version of PCBACKUP was not, on my system, writing
the directory information properly. CPBACKUP has fixed this.
3. Although the documentation talks about the ability to write to
standard DOS disks, experimentation with Norton has convinced me
that CPBACKUP addresses sectors directly when in this mode.
The appearance of a filename on the disk is a sham - it is an
entry in the root directory covering all valid sectors, but is NOT
used by CPBACKUP itself. You can change or delete the filename
without affecting CPBACKUP's ability to restore from the disk.
4. CPBACKUP can still (like PCBACKUP) fail to create the artificial
file and volume name on the final disk but can restore from that
disk.
If you are worried about another user looking at the disk and
thinking it totally empty (as both DIR and CHKDSK suggest) use
label to put an appropriate volume name on the disk and Norton
(or similar) to create an artificial filename.
----
Neale D. Hind - (N.D.Hind@stl.stc.co.uk)dsew@troi.cc.rochester.edu (David Sewell) (02/19/91)
I've just downloaded the most recent PCBACKUP version (now CPBACKUP) from the Central Point BBS (you have to be a registered owner & get the password from customer service to do this). Customer Service told me that the upgrade was fairly light. But I now find that CPBACKUP will do a high-speed DMA backup just fine on my compatible 386SX, whereas PCBACKUP 6.0 never would, with two different SX motherboards (always broke down when disks were changed). I had always thought the problem was my DMA controller, but it seems that it may have been a software problem. Does anyone know for sure whether they purposely rewrote the code to fix high-speed problems? -- David Sewell, English Dep't, University of Rochester, New York USA dsew@cc.rochester.edu || dsew%cc.rochester.edu@uorvm.BITNET