D'oh! Backup issue solved

please see embedded comments below. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: ajp166 <ajp166(a)bellatlantic.net> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 8:54 AM Subject: Re: D'oh! Backup issue solved Yes, that would be a nice feature, but I'd be satisfied for starters with ANY Win9x-based utility that actually would provide a no-nonsense backup procedure, one that would recognize that it formatted the tape, one that would follow its own schedule and would recognize the same tape each time it was in the drive. I'd like it to start within 1 minute of when it's invoked when running on a 150 MHz machine, and that wouldn't ask me more than once if REALLY want to do what I just typed. I'd like it to go ahead and back up the files it can back up and skip the ones it can't, without human intervention, and NEVER create new files that subsequently require it be manually instructed, file by file, not to back up the files the program itself created in order to perform the backup, all of which are, of course. open. When I'm using a 20-tape library, I'd prefer it NOT ask for permission to use the next tape, and, having gotten that perimssion, I'd prefer it not ask again before overwriting the tape. I'd prefer it be able to read the backup it wrote yesterday, and I'd be happy if it could recognize the tape it just formatted. If you know of such a device that works with 4 or 8mm SCSI devices, 100 percent of the time, preferably unattended, and will actually utilize the bandwidth of the tape device (80MB/sec, in bursts, 90 MB/min, continuous/aggregate) please share the info with us. The NT stuff is the only OS-resident software I've encountered that actually works. The backup that comes with Win9x works with the picotapes that work on the floppy ports, but they can't handle an adult's device. What really PISSES ME OFF about all this software, again, with the exception of the NT stuff, is that it doesn't know about SCSI-1 devices, and doesn't work one bit better on high-speed large-capacity disk drives than on tapes. If there were even one program that really would work, producing unattended backups of the whole system over the LAN every day, assuming there's enough bandwidth on its 100Mb channel, I'd use it. I've bought a half dozen different vendors' offerings, and half of them don't even run, let alone perform backups.