Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!maytag!watstat!dmurdoch
From: dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: backup programs
Message-ID: <404@maytag.waterloo.edu>
Date: 22 Aug 89 03:25:11 GMT
References: <44566@bbn.COM>
Sender: daemon@maytag.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 37

In article <44566@bbn.COM> akhanna@BBN.COM () writes:
>Any recommendations for hard-disk backup programs, especially those
>that support incremental backup?

I use Fastback Plus, and haven't had any serious problems yet.  The user 
interface is a little ugly (menus that don't quite do what you expect, and 
unconventional ways to move around).  It supports 5 or 6 different
types of backup - the one I use is called "separate incremental".  It lets
you save all copies of files.  Other incremental ones lose track of earlier
versions of files when they back up later ones. Another option doesn't
touch the Archive bit on the file, so you can do multiple copies of your
incremental backup, or mix and match types.  You can also do complete disk
backups, with or without touching the Archive bit.

It's very fast - with 360K disks I have trouble keeping up with writing and
sticking labels on, though 1.2M disks are easier, at about a minute each.
It'll format on the fly, which saves a lot of time.

It's very incompatible with Desqview, because it gets its speed by low level
access to the disk, using the DMA hardware.  Doing anything that touches the
disk within Desqview (on a 386) brings the system down.

It claims to have DOS compatible disk formats, but it's not really true.  DOS
will be able to read the disk without dying, but it'll only see a volume 
label and one huge file.  You need to have a copy of FB around to recover
anything.  And I've had problems recycling the disks - they always need 
to be reformatted before being usable as DOS disks.  Not a big deal in either 
case.

They also claim to be doing data compression (if you want), and some kind
of redundancy of what they save, so that you can lose a whole track from the
floppy without losing any data.  I haven't had to test this yet, as far as I 
know.

Hope this has been of some help.

Duncan Murdoch