Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!pacbell.com!pacbell!att!cbnewsc!straka From: straka@cbnewsc.att.com (richard.j.straka) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: Tops advice needed Keywords: Tops backups printing Message-ID: <1990Jun15.133436.9041@cbnewsc.att.com> Date: 15 Jun 90 13:34:36 GMT References: <1438@philtis.cft.philips.nl> <1990Jun14.212447.4903@oswego.Oswego.EDU> <1990Jun15.002524.8985@world.std.com> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 54 In article <1990Jun15.002524.8985@world.std.com> boris@world.std.com (Boris Levitin) writes: |ostroff@Oswego.EDU (Boyd Ostroff) writes: | ||In article <1438@philtis.cft.philips.nl> grant@cft.philips.nl (Joe Grant) writes: |||Hi Net, ||| I need some information on Tops. I have a Mac II with an ethernet ||| ||| 2. If I can backup over Tops, what software would be required to run ||| the backup or is it bundled with Tops - wishful thinking? I realise | ||Tops just lets you mount remote volumes. They behave exactly like they ||were a hard disk connected directly to your local mac. You should be able ||to use any program just like the TOPS volume was local (with the exception ||that you can't copy the System file over TOPS for some reason). | ||We're very happy with TOPS for the simple kind of things we do, but if you ||are backing up large amounts of data over AppleTalk, it will be pretty ||slow. | |A few programs don't recognize Tops remote volumes correctly, and the |popular Redux backup program by Microseeds, for one, doesn't (system crashes |when you attempt to select a Tops volume as the source). | |I back up over Tops to a Microtech R45 removable 45MB drive, but since Redux |refuses to work, I do a normal Finder copy operation. Over two bridges and |some bizarre wiring I still get 15MB per hour. Not at all bad given the I regularly do backups of my local volume onto a shared Syquest 45M removable across TOPS with Network DiskFit. It works quite reliably and also works well in background under MultiFinder. MF operation DOES slow the local Mac down a bit, but usually in a workable fashion. DiskFit normally relinquishes control to the foreground application quite gracefully. However, TOPS does not allow erasure of a remote vloume (for I guess somewhat obvious reasons). DiskFit *REQUIRES* this erasure of any new disks in the backup set. Therefore, there is a real kludgy workaround that will work if you need only one disk in your backup set. I used this method to start up my backup sets (each partition of my local disk is <40M to keep the sets down to a max of one Syquest cartridge), and once started, everything works fine as one would expect. The workaround is a bit tricky to describe, so I will be glad to do so if sufficient interest warrants. BTW, since TOPS can represent any folder on an HFS volume as an HFS volume, you can actually back up to a FOLDER on the remote drive's platter. This means that you can have multiple disks/volumes backed up to a single Syquest cartridge in some situations (provided you don't exceed the cart's capacity at some inopportune time). -- Richard Straka AT&T Bell Laboratories, IH-6K311 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ UUCP: att!ihlpf!straka MSDOS: All the wonderfully arcane ARPA: straka@ihlpf.att.com syntax of UNIX(R), but without the power.