please see embedded comments below.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: ajp166 <ajp166_at_bellatlantic.net>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 8:54 AM
Subject: Re: D'oh! Backup issue solved
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Erlacher <richard_at_idcomm.com>
> To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
> Date: Saturday, September 02, 2000 12:33 AM
> Subject: Re: D'oh! Backup issue solved
>
>
> >Folks with big ISP's/search engines tend to have between 750 GB and 1.5
> TB
> >of storage, depending on their size. Numerous corporate enterprises
> around
> >here are near the TB range right now. I heard on the radio about one
> new
> >internet startup that brought up 775 GB of RAID their first day.
>
>
> May be so. I manage 40 clients and 4 servers every day and its not an
> issue.
> I could care less about the problem of dealing with more than 10-20gb.
> Most
> people I know of want a good solid very reliable 5-20gb system that
> really
> does make a restorable backup. In that range there are a lot of
> products,
> loads of hardware and most work fine. What I find lacking is the ability
> to
> IMAGE copy the disks(for NT4) replace the disk and write it back. I'm
> used
> to doing this with VMS to clone a disk and it's a life saver.
>
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.
>
> Allsion
>
>
>
Received on Sat Sep 02 2000 - 19:07:20 BST