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From: macman@wpi.WPI.EDU (Chris Silverberg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: True Multitasking
Message-ID: <1991Jan16.152603.27579@wpi.WPI.EDU>
Date: 16 Jan 91 15:26:03 GMT
References: <19019@shlump.nac.dec.com> <42588@ut-emx.uucp> <1991Jan15.233452.1163@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Lines: 38

In article <1991Jan15.233452.1163@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu> jxf@orion.cis.ksu.edu (Jerry Frain) writes:

>I have an 80 MB drive.  I don't have the money right now to invest in a
>tape backup system.  I need to initialize ~seventy 1.40MB floppies so
>that I can back up my hard drive (no, I did not purchase already-formatted
>floppies).

I occasionally use the primitive HDBackup program to do backups... it will
automatically format the floppy if it is not formatted already. I would imagine
most backup programs do this... i'd advise looking at alternative backup
programs if yours does not have this capability.

>Now, would you care to calculate how much of my time will be spent
>formatting these seventy diskettes?  Maybe _your_ average user does
>not require backups.

If you backup a hard drive, your disks will be formatted ONCE. Subsequent
backups do NOT require reinitializing the disk.  This seems to be a pretty
shallow argument. Oh yes, i format 70 disks a day.


>Yup.  I'd like to see one that compresses files as it backs them up.
>The standard hard disks are not getting any smaller.  A simple system
>enhancement like providing a better back up utility would help many
>users.

Try Compactor... never used it as a backup program myself, but I've heard
that it works pretty well.

- Chris


 
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