Re: Having trouble with Archiver (HD Backup)

[florpch@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Lawrence S Lee)]

In article <1p35l8$pih@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> cd248@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Richard Sherman) writes:
>
>I have some questions about using the archiver that comes with system
>6 to back up my HD.

HA! That's a good one. Believe me, my friend, do NOT use System 6's archiver
if you value your hard drive. I guess you missed all of my wonderful
troubles with that great program. Uh-uh. Don't use it.

>I was going to back up all files since my last backup and I unmarked
>all the files and then used the auto mark feature to mark all files
>whose modification date is after my last backup.  It told me that
>about 27 megabytes were selected.  The problem is, I only have 23
>megabytes used in my HD!

Funny how that works, isn't it? You're lucky though... I had about 23 megs
used on my hard drive, and archiver said I had over _40_ megs of data. FUNNY
how that is, considering I was backup up a ProDOS partition.

>Is there a bug in the program or am I doing something wrong?  I have
>a GS with sytem 6 installed and an Apple High speed SCSI card hooked
>to my HD.  I've also got an 8MHz Zip GS installed (if that makes any
>difference here).

USE SOMETHING ELSE!

>Also, what's the best way to do an incremental back up?  I'd like to
>just back up the files that were modified since the last backup.  But
>if I keep doing this, it seems to me that I'll end up with more disks
>than If I just back the whole thing up each time.  And restoring from
>all those incremental sets of backup disks would be a problem too.
>Is the easiest way just to do the whole HD each time as I've been
>doing?


If you're backing up ProDOS partitions, consider Prosel. It has great
options for backup, including, I believe, three different types of
incremental backup. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the _best_ of
interfaces... I went and bought Bakkup 2.0 myself, although I haven't
completely tested it out myself (something I should do really soon)... but
it sounds like a safe bet to me. In addition to having data compression like
ProSel, Bakkup has a desktop interface, and allows you to EASILY select
which files you want to backup (like Archiver, but... unlike Archiver,
Bakkup 2.0 seems to actually work.)

I thought it ironic that Archiver featured "file compression"... I mean,
normally, I would think that "file compression" would mean compressing EACH
file that is to be backed up, but Archiver seems to think it means "avoiding
REALLY BIG files to back up... after all, that WILL save disk space!" I was
astounded to realize that after doing a full-volume backup and restore, I
lost about a third of my files. wonderful.

(I could rant about archiver for days, so just belive me, stay away from
archiver)

-- 
Larry Lee                   |
florpch@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu  |
florpch@jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu  |
llee@gnh-starport.cts.com   |