Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    Before you do ANYTHING make sure of the integrity of your backup.
    i.e. make sure EVERY backup diskette is readable.  I didn't do this
    one time when I reformatted one of my hard drives and had to hand enter
    4 WEEKS (i didn't do incrementals, but do now) worth of data.
    
    mark
    
    ps quarterback v3.0 now has a diskette verify mode.

    This is how I have my A590 partitioned:
    
    DH0: 3 meg WorkBench. All system necessary files are stored here
    (fonts, etc.)
    
    DH1: 15 meg Program Disk.  I keep all of the programs in this
    partition.
    
    DH2: 2 meg Data Disk.  This is where I keep my data files for
    databases,	word processor, spreadsheets.
    
    With this partitioning, I can save lots of time in backup.  Since the
    only thing that changes on a regular basis is the data files, I can
    just do backup on DH2:.  Dh0 and DH1 are only backed up when they are
    changed.  Note that 3 partitions will gobble up some memory, so I don't
    recommend it unless you have more than 1 meg of memory.  If you have
    only 1 meg, you can accomplish the same results with 2 partitions by
    creating a subdirectory on DH1: called DATA:.  Keep all of your data
    files here and then when doing backup, just specify DATA: as your
    backup disk.  Don't know if MRBackup allows you to do this or not but
    QuarterBack does.
    
    Hope this helps.
    
    Ken
    

I tried MRBackup once.  THen I bought Quarterback.  QB has my vote - it is
a really nice package, and FAST.  It essentially runs at the maximum rate
of your floppies.  I wouldn't be without it.

	Paul

I just picked up Quarterback. I like it but was hoping for a more
graphical interface (spoiled by DECwindows, I guess.)

How's version 4.0? I think mine was 3.xxx . Does 4.0 have some kind
of disk mapping (find errors and map them out) capability?

john

    re .-1
    
    John,
    
    You can get a free update to 4.0 if you send it in with something 
    showing you fot it within the last 3 months.
    
    Version 4.0 changes 
    1. handles subdirectory selection much cleaner than in
       previous versions.
    2. The user interface is essentially the same. No such thing as
       disk mapping.
    3. They've added fuel guages in each floppy window so you can
       watch progress and they beep after every volume now.
    4. You can print the catalogue directly from the floppy
       so you never have to save it.
    5. You can verify the goodness of your floppies. It does a fake
       restore to force it to read all the disks.
    6. It has a slow transfer mode option for those systems which have
       DMA woes (it simply uses less buffers)
    7. They fixed the bugs in previous version. The biggy seems like the
       one that used to crash your system "if" you ever had to use the
       2nd copy of the catalogue and it happen to be split between volumes.
    8. Increased the several counters so you files counts can be larger.
    9. Added support for bernouli and other large backup media.
    10. Set the archive bits after the backup is complete. I think this
        was done incorrectly in earlier versions.
    11. They added compatable volume lables to each floppy so the validator
        can at least give you the volume name when you insert a QB volume.
        Don't have to worry about mixing them up any more.
    12. The catalogue now tells you where the files are (volume number)
    13. And finally, they added a bug!  Occasionally, QB will tell you
        the backup requires 1 more floppy than it actually uses.  It's 
        rare that you will see this and it doesn't cause anything else
        to go wrong.  I had the unusual experience of getting to report
        the first official bug with 4.0
    
    It's worth updating to 4.0
    
    Frank

Re: .6

>    10. Set the archive bits after the backup is complete. I think this
>        was done incorrectly in earlier versions.

It wasn't really a bug.  Earlier versions would set the archive bit as
soon as the file was backed up.  (This is a way of doing it that takes
the least amount of time since the system could overlap hard disk I/O
with the floppy I/O.)

They changed it to take care of the case where you abort a backup
in the middle:  you probably want to begin the backup again from the
beginning, and you don't want to miss any files whose archive bits
were set due to the aborted backup.

re .6

Thanks Frank. 

It turns out that the version I have is V2.3 - which must be OLD!  
And Moe didn't even date the sales slip (VISA reciept)

Time for a talk with Moe (what did he say that day, Bruce, "It's the latest
version!" - right moe!)

john

    
    reply .-1
    
    Actually John, 2.3 is the almost the latest.  The 2.2 upgrade came out
    in March-89.  Sometime in the summer they went to 2.3 and didn't even
    announce it to all the owners.  2.3 was an enhancement to support the
    large backup devices and they simply sent it to you of you bought one
    and then found out QB didn't work with it.  The next release was 4.0
    which just happened in April.  The 3.0 version out there is pirate
    copy of 2.2 (I think) which found its way onto a network somewhere.
    Still, I always think it's a good idea to go back and pick on Moe.
    
    Frank
    
    

Hmm. Glad I hadn't blasted Moe yet! Otherwise I'd owe him an apology...

And thats worse than letting him get away with it without saying anything :-)

Thanks for the info Frank.

johmn

    Re .8
    
>   It turns out that the version I have is V2.3 - which must be OLD!
    
    V2.3 is the previous release.  The V4.0 documentation explains that
    they went from V2.3 directly to V4.0 because of the existence of a
    pirated version calling itself "V3.0".
    
    I asked the CCS folks if V4.0 could restore a V2.3 save series, and
    they claim it can.  I tried it and was visited by the GURU.  The same
    save series restored properly using the copy of V2.3 that I kept for
    safe-keeping.  The moral of the story is to mark each save series with
    the version under which it was created and to retain that version as
    long as you retain the save series.

    I repartitioned my drives this weekend.(Turbo Silver and a Nazcron
    script had a conflict and blew away part of my disk).  The v4.0 catalog
    feature was a life saver.  My one complaint is that it is difficult to
    differentiate between the parent directory and a sub-directory in the
    catalog.  I had to look for an orphan ".info" file.  Otherwise v4.0
    functioned fine.  Restoring single sub-directories and/or its contents
    are a snap.

    Just thought I would thank you all for the advice and let you know
    that the re-partition worked fine ... no problems.  
    
    MRBackup worked like a dream though a rather long and slow dream.  I
    think in future that it would be better to forget about the file
    compression as it is extremely slow. 

    I now have a 4Mb Workbench partition, a 10Mb Applications partition
    and a 6Mb data partition.  This seems to work out ideal for me.
    
    Once again thanks for the advice.
    
    Peter