Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!tekig5!tekig4!mstevens
From: mstevens@tekig4.TEK.COM (Michael Stevens)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Troubles with MSDOS 3.2 XCOPY
Message-ID: <3143@tekig4.TEK.COM>
Date: 23 Aug 88 20:36:12 GMT
Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.
Lines: 22

I have been following the discussions about disk problems and backups, and
having recently purchased an AT clone, figured I'd better back up my disk
(Seagate 20MB).  I'm using MSDOS 3.21.  I don't have any puchased
toolkits (yet).

First I used DOS's "backup", but was unimpressed with the fact that my
harddisk subdirectories were not retained.  I like subdirectories, and
wanted my backups to reflect my harddisk so I can find things more
easily should I ever have to back up individual files.  So, I tried to use
"xcopy c:*.* a: /e /s" and then "xcopy c:*.* a: /e /s /v".  The AT
chugged along happily for awhile on some smaller directories.  BUT THEN....
Unfortunately, I got the infamous "disk error reading drive a:
Abort, Retry, Ignore" message intermittently, most often with files over
32K bytes. 
I manually created directories and used "copy" with no
problems at all.  I looked at the differences between the "original" and
"bad" copies (after using ignore), and there were many " <||||||||"
characters in the trashed copy.

Anybody know why "xcopy" is unreliable??  I get the general impression
that MKSToolKit allows me the features I want with some reliability.  Truth??
I've also heard that FastBak is good.  Any recommendations??