Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!uwvax!ericf
From: ericf@uwvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Comments on FASTBACK disk backup utility?
Message-ID: <3276@rsch.WISC.EDU>
Date: Thu, 26-Feb-87 10:34:08 EST
Article-I.D.: rsch.3276
Posted: Thu Feb 26 10:34:08 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Feb-87 04:47:38 EST
References: <4394@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU> <436@kaiser.UUCP> <2405@homxb.UUCP> <13@gt-eedsp.EDU>
Reply-To: ericf@rsch.WISC.EDU (Eric Feigenson)
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 24

I've been using FASTBACK for a while, and I like it, except that if an
unrecoverable error occurs on a floppy (like track 0 bad), two things
happen that are very unpleasant:

1. FASTBACK terminates.  It would be nice if it could keep track (no pun
   intended) of where it was, and just say "Try another floppy", and pick
   up where it left off.

2. As it terminates, it erases the FASTBACK.CAT file, so if you're doing
   incrementals, you lose the easily accessible map to the backup (the
   floppies also contain a catalog, but then you have to trudge through
   them all to find one file to restore).

This problem is particularly annoying when you're doing an incremental, and
you can't restart it, since files backed up get their archive bit turned off,
so they won't get backed up again unless you do a full backup.  In addition,
if you're doing a full backup, you essentially have to start from scratch.

Aside from that, I've been really happy with FASTBACK - it is fast.  Does
anyone know if the FASTBACK folks are addressing the above issues?

				    -Eric Feigenson
				    ericf@rsch.wisc.edu
				    {seismo, harpo, ihnp4, allegra}!uwvax!ericf