Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!killer!ltf
From: ltf@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Lance Franklin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: How is Atari doing in Germany?
Message-ID: <6057@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: 10 Nov 88 07:22:15 GMT
References: <706@sdcc15.ucsd.edu> <16750@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: ltf@killer.Dallas.TX.US (Lance Franklin)
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection BBS, Dallas, Tx
Lines: 46

In article <16750@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> c60a-2bn@web-2f.berkeley.edu (Lawrence Y. Chiu) writes:
>
>Atari is doing very well in Europe.  Almost 4 STs are sold for each Amiga.
>Atari releases their sales figures every quarter; they are required to re-
>lease them by the SEC, since they have an obligation to the people who own
>shares in the company.  By the way, almost one-third of Amigas made in Eu-
>rope are returned as defective.

Well, I'm here to answer the question below, but I'd like to see some docu-
mentation on the above, If you have em.  Bad idea to post stuff like the 
above without quoting sources...leads to all kinds of trouble.  And post an
equivalent defect-percentage for Atari, if you want to be fair.


>Is it possible to write a program that will backup the FAT and the directory
>of a hard disk partition?  Programs that wipe out hard disks generally do so
>by destroying the FAT and the directory.
>
>A program that will backup the vital information on a disk is effective pro-
>tection against viruses and other malicious code.  Is this project feasible?
>Such a program will probably make backing up a hard disk much more painless!

Yup...it's already done on IBM-PC's, which have almost identical disk formats.
The programs simply create a file in a fixed location on the hard-disk (usually
the LAST n sectors on the disk) and copy the FAT and directory to this file.
You merely run the program at boot-up, and thus you have a FAT/Dir backup to
fall back on when something goes wrong.  As long as you don't re-order stuff
on the disk, the file will stay put.  As a matter of fact, the version I have
for the PC comes with a disk reorganizer to keep everything efficient, and it
automatically keeps the backup file in place, and optionally re-runs the FAT
backup program after reordering everything.  Of course, the program depends
on the assumption that whatever screws up your FAT/Dirs won't take out the
opposite side of the disk...probably not a bad assumption.  And of course, if
things go bad, you simply boot a disk with the recovery program, and it copies
the last n sectors to the first n sectors to recover the disk...pretty simple
program, shouldn't be difficult to do on the ST.

Lance.



-- 
+-------------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------+
| Lance T Franklin        | | I never said that! It must be some kind of a  |
| ltf@killer.DALLAS.TX.US | | forgery...I gotta change that password again. |
+-------------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------+