Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!virtech!cpcahil
From: cpcahil@virtech.UUCP (Conor P. Cahill)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: backup programs
Message-ID: <1071@virtech.UUCP>
Date: 25 Aug 89 11:56:51 GMT
References: <44566@bbn.COM> <40970021@hpindda.HP.COM> <2503@husc6.harvard.edu> <591@b8.UUCP>
Organization: Virtual Technologies Inc
Lines: 39

In article <591@b8.UUCP>, paulj@b8.UUCP ( Joey Paul x4129 ) writes:
> I've checked problems for 3 different businesses (actually one was a church)
> who were having problems using Fastback.  All three had the same symptoms:
> XT clones using Fastback were unable to use the backup - Fastback wouldn't
> restore what it had written and, of course, DOS wouldn't either.  Finally
> wound up reformatting the floppies and doing a backup from DOS so they
> wouldn't be "up the creek" in case anything happened.  No idea why this
> happened (in three totally separate cases) but from what I've seen I won't
> use it.  


I have used fastback for several years on a multitude of different pc's
including 86s, 286s, and 386s.  No-name brands, name brands.  1.2Meg floppies,
360K floppies. Etc....

I have had the problem where the formatting code in fastback seems to lock
up at an arbitrary point.  This only occurs the first time I use a diskette
and it occurs about 5% of the time.  I have never had it happen on one of 
it's already formatted diskettes.

Even with all the problems I have never had the problem where I was unable to 
restore the data off of a diskette.  Fastback has had a problem reading some
of them, but using it's ECC it was able to restore the data anyway.

If you are having the problems that you describe, I would guess that you are
running into the DMA problem.  Fastback installation software tests the DMA
to verify that multiple channels can be used at the same time.  If this is the
problem, then either someone copied in fastbacks *.exes from another system
without going through the installation (i.e. fconfig) or you DMA problem is
marginal and is not found during configuration.

Try using fastback with the /slow argument to force fastback to not use
multiple dma channels at the same time.

-- 
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| Conor P. Cahill     uunet!virtech!cpcahil      	703-430-9240	!
| Virtual Technologies Inc.,    P. O. Box 876,   Sterling, VA 22170     |
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