19 Nov
2001
19 Nov
'01
5:24 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Erlacher [mailto:edick@idcomm.com]
I'm concerned mainly about Win9x. There were
numerous backup
packages that
worked VERY well under [DOS6.22/Win3.11]. Since the release
of Win9x, I've
bought several backup packages, and a couple of releases of
each, yet not seen
one that even barely worked on any sort of consistent basis.
Ahh, well if you allow third-parties into the picture, it changes somewhat.
[Backup utility problems snipped]
There's something about the OS that interferes
with a backup.
The Microsoft
Backup for Win98 seems to work ...sorta... but it only works
...sorta... and
falls down many times, misinterpreting a drive that the OS
recognizes correctly
to be a 2GB partition to be 300+ Terabytes. Naturally it
falls down later
because of that problem. <sigh>
Since it's a microsoft utility, you can bet that the moment you upgrade
windows, the backups will be unusable, since the new, improved version will
be completely incompatible.
An OS without a real backup utility is of little use
because
you have to have
backup ... not just copies of things, but a real backup,
context and all, that
Bingo. Windows is not an enterprise class system, nor, IMNSHO, is it even
worthy of being used in a production context. ... but back to the topic at
hand. :)
enables you to get back to where you were. DOS
didn't have
In a single utility? Perhaps not, but how much "context" do you expect from
DOS? :) The built-in backup program would copy files onto some other
medium, and a recovery disk could at least be made relatively simply. Maybe
I'm misunderstanding your complaint, though.
My problem with the DOS backup utility was that every time somebody at m$
re-compiled something, your old backups were useless.
I assume a third-party add-on would fix that.
that, UNIX doesn't
have it (though it does have TAR, which makes copies to
I find that TAR gives me useable backups in general. Again, there's no such
thing as a "standalone tar," so you'll need a recovery disk/tape/something.
It also has CPIO if you're into that sort of thing, and several third-party
things.
tape), OS/2 doesn't have
it, LINUX doesn't have it ... I don't know what a guy's to
See unix above... also note that TAR may be available for OS/2.
It is slightly harder to build an OS/2 recovery disk.
do. I guess
image-copying the disk to tape, empty space and all, is the
only solution. Of
course that means the files are replaceable only on an all or
nothing basis.
Well, do you consider that space part of your "context?" Where is the line
drawn? Also note that the empty space isn't exactly empty in most cases.
As for "all-or-nothing" replacement, that's not exactly the case. You
certainly could mount an image right from the backup device (very slowly for
tape ;) and read files out. It would be a larger problem if your backups
don't fit filesystem-for-cartrige.
I'm relatively convinced that as long as you can backup files and attributes
(including ACL, etc), treating special files as if they were (special, that
is...), you ought to be ok.
The only place you'd get bitten is in systems that need to know an exact
location of a bootable image, or other such special file. That can probably
be handled in the restore procedure, though.
So I think DOS and Unix can be backed up pretty well. Windows is a
different story, I guess. It would help, for windows, of course, if they'd
provide a decent, uniform, block-device access method. Don't hold your
breath, though.
^%$#@! ... what a bunch of crap!
What really makes it inexcusable is the fact that a backup utility shouldn't
be too difficult to cook up.
Regards,
Chris
Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL
/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl
Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'