Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!milton!yoda.eecs.wsu.edu!pcooper From: pcooper@eecs.wsu.edu (Phil Cooper - CS495) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.introduction Subject: Re: Need recommendation for backup program Message-ID: <1991Feb02.090750.19009@eecs.wsu.edu> Date: 2 Feb 91 09:07:50 GMT References: <1991Jan29.220936.21595@cbnewsk.att.com> <6572@munnari.oz.au> Reply-To: pcooper@yoda.UUCP (Phil Cooper - CS495) Organization: Washington State University, Pullman Lines: 28 In article mwm@pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) writes: >In article <6572@munnari.oz.au> ianr@felix.ee.mu.OZ.AU (Ian ROWLANDS) writes: > > 3. Quarterback. This is a commercial product, and is highly recommended as > the best commercial backup program. > >I have religious problems with QuarterBack. It creates it's own format >file system on floppies. This means I have to have to use QB to do >restores. This creates two problems: 1) I can't back up QB with QB; 2) >to recover a single file, I have to start QB. > >For these reasons I chose ExpressCopy over QB. XCO creates either OFS >or FFS format on floppies. It's as fast as QB (give or take a few >percent), and has the nice intuition interface. It creates a list of >the disks, including modes, sizes & dates. A search (well, grep) on >that file turns up the floppy number it's on, and a copy command gets >it back. > One word of caution in regards to ExpressCopy. It claims to allow you to use unformatted diskettes in the backup process (formatting on the fly), however I have found that it creates hard errors on floppies about 25% of the time. I mean, if a backup takes 20 disks to do, you can count on it destroying 5 disks. If the disks are pre-formatted, this problem does not occur. I use Expresscopy myself, and I like it very much, but be SURE to format your disks ahead of time! -Phil-