Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!grian!alex From: alex@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Alex Pournelle) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps Subject: Fastback II 2.1 problems? Message-ID: <1990Jul26.083232.14547@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us> Date: 26 Jul 90 08:32:32 GMT References: <6652@helios.TAMU.EDU> Organization: Workman & Associates Lines: 50 jwright@cfht.hawaii.edu (Jim Wright) writes: >On that elusive search for a good network backup program... >We called Fifth Generation about FastBack II, and this is what I use F-B II Version 2.10 (latest, as far as I know; Jan 90 version) a great deal, and have some problems. It, for no discernible reason, locks up while backing up, either to tape or floppy, occasionally. Admittedly, I have a large drive (210M used of 330M), but I'm under single-finder 6.0.3/6.0 with Desktop Manager. Has anyone else tracked this down more? Should I upgrade to 6.0.5? I'm rather disgruntled by several other features (or not) of F-B and thought I'd ask other's opinions: --If you have a jumbo-full drive with >6,000 files on it (sigh), it takes about ten minutes to scan the directory, and you cannot abort the filename scan halfway through 'n' keep those already scanned. --I can't make it work with the Teac 60 Mbyte SCSI external tape drive. It formats & erases tapes OK, but then bombs out with an error "unable to write to tape correctly" after trying to actually back up for a while. --Compression is worse than useless: it's <10% efficient, and takes *three times* longer on my Plus. --Backup performance in background under MultiFinder (which I no longer call MultiCrasher: 6.1B9 is *really stable*) is jerky, slow and generally obnoxious. --One cannot 2clik on a folder in Backup File Choose and have it choose all subfolders. Grr. Nor does this view give you a total backup size. Comments? Alex P.S. Comments from Retrospect users are welcome; I don't have a copy to compare. Besides, when I back up people's systems, F-B seems by far the more popular (not to say reliable) choice. SUM Backup seems most reliable, but it won't back up by folder name. -- Alex Pournelle, freelance thinker Also: Workman & Associates, Data recovery for PCs, Macs, others ...elroy!grian!alex; BIX: alex; voice: (818) 791-7979 fax: (818) 794-2297 bbs: 791-1013; 8N1 24/12/3