Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!unido!laura!heike!klute From: klute@heike.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Rainer Klute) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: BackupST a must have!!! Message-ID: <2806@laura.UUCP> Date: 19 Nov 90 09:38:38 GMT References: <639@fsucs.UUCP> <2792@laura.UUCP> Sender: news@laura.UUCP Reply-To: klute@heike.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Rainer Klute) Organization: University of Dortmund, Germany Lines: 34 In article , fred@prisma.cv.ruu.nl (Fred Appelman) writes: |> As the author of the program I would like to comment on this. I am |> really |> looking for a suitable compression algorithm. I want an algorithm which |> is fast as has acceptable compression ratios. I suggest the compression scheme implemented in Arc or Zoo. Advantages: - sources are freely available, - the compression factor is really good (somewhere in the 40-50% order), - fast, at least in the long run. Let me comment on the last statement as one might well argue about that. I do backups in the following way: First I do a full backup, then I do a differential backup once a week. When I am about to run out of backup disks I have to do another full backup. Now, doing a full backup takes a lot of time so it would be nice if it could be done one as seldom as possible. On the other hand during one week between two backups generally only few files change so the time for a differential backup may well be neglected (well, almost). With a very good compression scheme the backup disk pool can be exploited much better and the time consuming full backup is not neccessary that often. Bottom line: The time to write data to disk is only one side of the coin. -- Dipl.-Inform. Rainer Klute klute@irb.informatik.uni-dortmund.de Univ. Dortmund, IRB klute@unido.uucp, klute@unido.bitnet Postfach 500500 |)|/ Tel.: +49 231 755-4663 D-4600 Dortmund 50 |\|\ Fax : +49 231 755-2386