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From: toma@tekgvs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Comments on FASTBACK disk backup utility?
Message-ID: <2091@tekgvs.TEK.COM>
Date: Tue, 17-Feb-87 10:27:51 EST
Article-I.D.: tekgvs.2091
Posted: Tue Feb 17 10:27:51 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Feb-87 06:42:03 EST
References: <4394@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU> <228@uvicctr.UUCP>
Reply-To: toma@tekgvs.UUCP (Thomas Almy)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 25

In article <228@uvicctr.UUCP> sbanner1@uvicctr.UUCP (S. John Banner) writes:
...
>The one thing (though it is not too big
>a deal, as it doesn't come up that often), is that it takes much longer
>to restore files as it does to back them up (it took about 1.5-2 hours
>[it was 2AM, so it is hard to remember... :-) ], to restore the full
>20Meg of files...  As I say this is not a big deal, as you don't go
>around restoring your entire hard-drive every second week (I have only
>done it once :-).
...

It is critical to have a large number (lets say 20 or more) of buffers when
running Fastback.  When doing a complete disk restoration, booting from a
disk with no CONFIG.SYS file, there are an insufficient number of files
and FRESTORE thrashes badly.  I put a one-liner CONFIG.SYS file with
"BUFFERS=20" in it and performance shoots up to that of FASTBACK.  By the
way, on an AT class machine, it backs up slightly more than 2 megabytes
per minute on HD floppies!  It will also backup to standard floppies but
using 80 tracks (2/3 the capacity, but less than half price for disks), but
I haven't tried this.  It corrected an error once; for some reason it takes
many seconds to do it, but the data was recovered (and the floppy was then
tossed out!).

Tom Almy
Tektronix, Inc.