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From: stevek@hpfcmgw.HP.COM (Steve Kauder)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Colorado Memory tape backup
Message-ID: <13460007@hpfcmgw.HP.COM>
Date: 9 Apr 91 19:12:08 GMT
References: <1991Apr4.155954.11431@digi.lonestar.org>
Organization: HP Fort Collins, CO
Lines: 57

>In article <1991Apr5.170102.18677@cbnewsl.att.com> feg@moss.ATT.COM
>(Forrest Gehrke) writes:
>
>>The CMS software allows you an unattended backup option,
>>contrary to another poster I have read in this group
>>who complained about the need for interactive backup.
>
>When are you people going to learn to listen to what I mean, and not what I
>say?  ;^)
>
>I did write that rather badly...the backup itself is automatic, as Forrest
>states.  The things I find to be a collective pain in the callipygian pore are
>1) the tape drive taking well over a minute to orient the tape (or something)
>after the cartridge is pushed in,  2) the worse-than-Mac menu you have to use
>to do a quick-erase and 3) add a new volume label (actually, there are two
>labels called for, so make that 4) ), and finally 5), it will let you tell it
>to do a backup.  If you forget to set the write tab, you have to go through 1)
>twice.
>
>What it does, it does well.  I just wish there were some way to run it with
>a batch file rather a bitching operator (me!).
>
>And while we're at it, I want an 800 THz clock, 256-bit wide bus and processor
>archetecture, no wait states, 8 Gb memory, a flat address space over _all_ of
>it for MSDOS, 65,536 parallel slave processors of the type just described, and
>and and and and...guuuuuukkkk....


This poster seems to be rather upset for reasons which are not obvious
at all to me.  Perhaps a little more maturity is called for?  That's 
another notes string...

I have a Colorado Memory Systems Jumbo 120 tape backup.  I run it entirely
from a batch file by using the command line options in the CMS software.
I have the batch file (1) retension the tape [again], (2) erase the
tape directory, (3) backup my C: drive, and (4) backup my D: drive.

I have the last three of these activities as optional in my batch
file.  I use a little utility called ASKKEY in the batch file to
prompt for input.  Depending on the input, I have set it up to skip
around functions.  If I do nothing, the batch files does the activities
listed above.

I am extremely pleased with the CMS product.  It was easy to install
and works wonderfully well.  Instead of 40-60 floppies, I just put in
a tape and come back an hour later.  Instead of organizing 40-60
floppies, I have a small tape which fits easily in a shirt pocket.

I did try to run the CMS software in a Desqview window.  If that had
worked, I could have had the backup running in the background while
I still did work.  [Yes, there is some risk of have a file open while
backing it up.]  Anyway, the CMS software definitely didn't work with
Desqview for me.  Too bad.  

I still highly recommend it.

sk