Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!bingvaxu!vu0112
From: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: FASTBACK PLUS
Keywords: backup
Message-ID: <2000@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 18 Mar 89 17:18:34 GMT
References: <441@nvuxk.UUCP>
Reply-To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 40

NB: Another question at end of article!!!

In article <441@nvuxk.UUCP> fleming@nvuxk.UUCP (George W. Fleming) writes:
>Doing a backup on my IBM PS/2 Model 70-121 with 3 1/2 inch floppies, I
>noticed that the first floppy always gets done real fast.  After that, 
>every floppy always gets reformated for some reason (even though the
>floppy was already formated).  This happens no matter how I rearrange
>the disks (the first is always fast, the succeeding ones are always slow
>because they have to be formatted).

I had a similar, but less disturbing, experience.  I'm using a PS/30 on
Novell to 3.5" DS/DD disks.  Let's say I'm doing a backup, the first
time with unformatted disks.  So it formats, takes four disks.  I backup
again, same databse, same disks, no changes.  This time it does *not*
format (of course), but it takes *less* time, reaches the fourth disk,
and asks for a fifth, which it formats.  On repeating this process, each
time the size of the backup set increases by some small amount,
converging on, say, 5 1/2 disks. 

OK, all these backups look great, good history files, just different
sizes for each backed up file.  So I call 5th Generation and get a
similar ignorant, rude response, put on hold, etc.  Eventually I am told
that intelligent compression is going on whereby with unformatted disks
(apparently since it's already taking its time with the formatting) does
*more* compression, yielding *less* disks with *more* time.  Thereafter
compression gets less, yielding *more* disks with *less* time.  How it
know to do this, I don't know.  But I was happy w/that until your
posting. 

Now *my* question: moving from old Fastback to FB+ I lost my most
important feature, being able to give an arbitrarily long list of
arbitrary filespecs to back up.  *THEY ONLY GIVE YOU TWENTY DAMNED
FILESPECS TO INCLUDE*! The old @file syntax is gone?! Am I overlooking
something obvious?  When I asked 5th Generation they didn't seem to
think so. . .
-- 
O---------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large
| Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton, vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .