ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Sun Jan 20 13:02:40 2002

I'd caution you to be VERY careful about relying on Win9x for backup,
irrespective of the 3rd-party application you use. There are only a few I
haven't tried, and and, so far, I've found exactly NONE that work reliably,
i.e. that perform backup, verify, and restore, as they should under a wide
range of situations. A few work some of the time, and those are the WORST
thing to try to deal with, as they build up unwarranted confidence. Keep in
mind that you spend most of the time simply making backups, and on the rare
occasion when you really do need it, it's a real disappointment to find that
the application can't read its own writing if the backup date and restore date
don't have the same checksum, or crc or the phase of the moon is different.

It's true that the Windows Backup is pretty poor, but the reason these
applications don't work, in general, has less to do with the fact they're
backup applications and more to do with the way in which the OS interacts with
its disk storage media, file system, and I/O, and consequently seems to have
ill effect on both the Microsoft-provided (acquired from Seagate) Backup and
those from third-party vendors. I've ovbserved the same ill effects on M$
backup that I've seen on products ranging in cost from $50 to $750, and have
yet to find one that works in all circumstances. Unfortunately, the crappy
product from M$ seems to work about as (un)reliably as any. What all of this
suggests to me is that it has little to do with the SCSI interface or with the
way in which it handles tape drives, since I've had similar problems on SCSI
tape, SCSI disk, IDE tape, and IDE removables, as well as floppy-tape. Even
storage to network devices seems to be impacted by the general ieffectiveness
of backup strategies under Wind9x.

I'd welcome any constructive suggestions, short of wasting another few bucks
on yet another half-assed backup package.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doc" <doc_at_mdrconsult.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95


> On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Ron Hudson wrote:
>
> > Exactly.. Well anyway windows 95 backup makes a good show
> > of complaining that it can't see the tape drive, That is
> > makes you think it should see the tape drive if you only
> > had a driver.
>
> Ron,
> I haven't been closely following this thread, so I disremember what
> model drive you have, but my experience with any Windows except NT/2k is
> that Richard should have said "The only thing that actually talkes to a
> scsi tape in windows land is *a real* backup application." That doesn't
> include Windows Backup.
> Contact me off-list, if you like, and if the Win98 solution still
> acts stupid.
>
> Doc
>
>
Received on Sun Jan 20 2002 - 13:02:40 GMT