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From: feg@moss.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke,2C-119,7239,ATTBL)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Gateway 2000
Message-ID: <1991Apr2.135737.8156@cbnewsl.att.com>
Date: 2 Apr 91 13:57:37 GMT
References: <1991Mar25.232522.29750@mathcs.sjsu.edu> <1991Mar26.065227.16558@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <1991Mar27.132658.25149@cbfsb.att.com> <6299@bwdls58.bnr.ca>
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Reply-To: feg@moss.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke)
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In article <6299@bwdls58.bnr.ca> mlord@bwdls58.bnr.ca (Mark Lord) writes:
>In article <1991Mar27.132658.25149@cbfsb.att.com> feg@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (forrest.e.gehrke) writes:
><
><You DO want the tape drive software.  The CMS software supplied 
><with this tape drive is far superior to that supplied by
><third party support such as PCTOOLS for this drive.
>
>Really?  In what way(s) is the CMS software superior to PCBACKUP 6.0 ?
>
>Personally, I find that the PCTOOLS s/w is 
>
>	a) faster, better compression, less unnecessary tape movement
>	b) mucho more reliable -- CMS error recovery is awful!!
>	c) easier to use, with mouse point-and-click directory tree,
>		and multiple set-up files

Perhaps I should have said "CMS software has greater versatility".
PCtools is essentially concerned only with the usual backup
configurations from a hard disk.  For instance, it has no 
facility for doing a tape search for a given file; no automatic 
backup (CMS will do a backup of all modified files whenever the 
PC has been idle for 5 minutes--if so configured).  

You can't just ask for a status of the tape, or get a listing 
of the files without committing to a backup, etc.

As for speed--try CMS TC-15 board (hardware compression/tape controller)
40MB average group of files can be backed up in 10 minutes, about
half the time using software compression and the floppy drive
controller.

CMS software allows multiple setup files.  They can be tagged or
listed in a separate file list.  Also backups of files before or
after any date can be done.  

With today's larger capacity floppy diskettes, the CMS software
isn't limited to reading only hard disks.  I find this handy for
archiving floppies.  And BTW, here is where the TC-15 or the
FC-10 controllers shine because operation doesn't have to
be divided between tape and floppy drive.

These are just some of the things the CMS software can do.
Nearly every command as a long list of available options
allowing all sorts of variations of backup, restore, search,
etc.

As for reliability, I have never encountered an error, so I 
can't comment on that.

Forrest Gehrke feg@dodger.att.com