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From: bruce@vax135.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Comments on FASTBACK disk backup utility?
Message-ID: <1777@vax135.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Feb-87 14:03:23 EST
Article-I.D.: vax135.1777
Posted: Wed Feb 25 14:03:23 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Feb-87 03:34:15 EST
References: <4394@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU> <117@nikhefk.UUCP>
Reply-To: bruce@vax135.UUCP (Bruce Hillyer)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 37

One of the great claims made about Fastback is that it can recover
from damaged disks.  Unfortunately, it can also fail horribly.

I made a full backup of the hard disk with fastback one time, and
used the separate verify procedure in the frestore program to
check that the data had been successfully written to the
diskettes.  Several months later I wanted to restore.  When I
gave the first diskette to frestore, it reported "too many errors"
and gave up.

"Well", I thought, "the first diskette just has the root and
dos files, I'll start frestore on the second diskette."
But no.  When I begin with the second diskette, frestore resolutely
informs me that it is diskette 2, and I should please insert
diskette 1.  No combination of control-c, inserting and removing
diskettes, and restarting the program will persuade frestore to
process diskette 2 from the backup set.  Indeed, it recognizes but
refuses to process any diskette other than #1 from that backup set.

This behavior is somewhat unusual--I have been able to start
reading other backup sets in the middle.  But flakeyness is not
an acceptable property for a backup utility.

Fastback has other problems too.  For instance, when I restore
files, the archive bit in the directory is not set properly,
so it appears that the file has never been backed up.  The
archive bit is also handled poorly in incremental backups:  fastback
immediately marks the file as backed up.  If the backup process
fails (for instance, when fastback cannot successfully format a
disk), the file is not backed up, but will not be taken on a
subsequent incremental backup.

I still use fastback because of its speed, but for critical data
I find a dos-formatted backup to be more secure.  If the diskette
can be read by dos I can retrieve the data, using an editor if need be.

				-B.