Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!decwrl!pa.dec.com!bacchus!mwm From: mwm@pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.introduction Subject: Re: Need recommendation for backup program Message-ID: Date: 6 Feb 91 18:49:39 GMT References: <1991Jan29.220936.21595@cbnewsk.att.com> <6572@munnari.oz.au> <52410@sequent.UUCP> Sender: news@pa.dec.com (News) Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 48 In-Reply-To: cseaman@sequent.UUCP's message of 6 Feb 91 02:03:50 GMT In article <52410@sequent.UUCP> cseaman@sequent.UUCP (Chris "The Bartman" Seaman) writes: mwm@pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) writes: < 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. I regularly back up QB (it sits in the UTIL directory on my hard disk), and have never had a complaint from it. Granted, You can't RESTORE from the copy that was on your hard disk in the event of a crash, but hey, who could? I just keep ONE working floppy with QB on it for emergencies. That's exactly what I meant. A backup of QB via QB is worthless - you have to have a copy of QB somewhere else. That makes a working copy of QB as critical as a working workbench disk. With XCO, I can restore XCR (the restore half of XCO) from the copy that was backed up on my hard disk. So I only have one incredibly critical floppy - the workbench floppy. With QB, you need a QB floppy as well. As to problem #2, when I want to restore a file, I simply fire up QB (takes all of two seconds), and select the file I want, at which point QB tells me which floppy disk(s) to insert, and I'm done. I've heard a little about QB's intuitionized recovery system. It sounds nice, but as a CLI user, I find doing a quick "grep" on the list files to get disk numbers, then copying the files to where I want them (which may or may not be where it came from) to be quite simple. If I ever decide I want that inuitionized interface, I'll write a CanDo app to do it for XCO. In addition, I can grab an XCO backup of something to move it to someone else's machine; I don't need to worry about whether or not they've got XCO on the other end. Like I said - it's mostly a religious thing. I want backups in a format that is readable by standard utilities shipped with _all_ systems. If 2.0 ships with an HD backup utility, that format will (eventually) be acceptable to me. Until then, it's got to be OFS format floppies (FFS on floppies doesn't cut it yet - and may not afterwards, depending on how well they recover from errors).