Tape backup

I have used tape backup since '85 on my Atari Mega ST running a BBS. In
those days a 20 mb (yes mb) hard drive cost $600+! Used SCSI hard drives
and stayed with SCSI equipment as I moved to Microsoft Windows on a new
computer. I keep 5 generations of tape and do the chore monthly on a Travan
4/8. Just this past week, I added a DVD burner and now I'm in the process
of replacing the tape method with DVD's. I've found that the greatest
benefit of backing up was do to recovering files I thought I didn't need
anymore.

The best adds to a computer station are; a backup method, an UPS and a
"skin" on the keyboard. Gotta add an optical mouse, DSL, a home network
(daughter wants on the Internet and access to the printer G). Hmmm....
and a scanner! More hmmmm... an USB thumb drive.


--
Don
--------
Vancouver, USA - One of the great cities in one of the 45+ countries in the
Americas!




Don@NoSpam wrote in message ...
As usual I probably am out of step with the world, but I've never cared
for tape backup. That was really driven home on an HP 1000 system on time
when the tape drive refused to read beyond record #n for whatever reason.

Not only that, supposed I backup my OS with some compressing BU scheme
and I want to recover the Registry. How now brown cow? I've opted to
BU to CDs on an selected file basis. If I have to reinstall Win it
certainly does no good to recover from an image of the previous system.

I'd appreciate learing from tape backup advocates...

Don


Jeff Richards wrote:

You might be better off using the backup program supplied with the tape
drive. Please see:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];242864
Tape Backup Units Supported by the Windows 98 Backup Program
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP W95/W98
"Minnie Bannister" wrote in message
...
I'm trying to use the Backup utility included with Win98SE. When I go
to
the screen where I choose to install it (it doesn't get installed by
default), it says it supports tape devices.

MB


On 05/31/04 12:05 am Don Schmidt put fingers to keyboard and launched
the following message into cyberspace:

What backup program are you using? BackUp My PC works with tape,
cd,
dvd or
even to a hard disk.

Could be you need to reinstall your program again after the tape
drive
install. Or, maybe your backup program needs a new driver to see
your
tape
drive.

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"Don Schmidt" Retired wrote in
:

I have used tape backup since '85 on my Atari Mega ST running a BBS. In
those days a 20 mb (yes mb) hard drive cost $600+! Used SCSI hard
drives and stayed with SCSI equipment as I moved to Microsoft Windows on
a new computer. I keep 5 generations of tape and do the chore monthly
on a Travan 4/8. Just this past week, I added a DVD burner and now I'm
in the process of replacing the tape method with DVD's. I've found that
the greatest benefit of backing up was do to recovering files I thought
I didn't need anymore.

The best adds to a computer station are; a backup method, an UPS and a
"skin" on the keyboard. Gotta add an optical mouse, DSL, a home network
(daughter wants on the Internet and access to the printer G).
Hmmm.... and a scanner! More hmmmm... an USB thumb drive.

Holy flashback! I had a Mega ST back then too and I believe my Megafile 30
hard drive was ~$1200 CDN. Fortunately work paid for it. I used to back up
to a Colorado tape drive.

I was originally hired to run a PDP-9 with CORE MEMORY and a 20MB hard drive
that was the size of my washing machine at home. You would boot it from the
toggle switches on the front or paper tape. It needed to warm up for about
an hour before it was stable. The boss hooked up and amplifer and speaker to
one of the registers and with a special program we could play music. Ahh the
memories...

Fuzzy Logic wrote:

"Don Schmidt" Retired wrote in
:

I have used tape backup since '85 on my Atari Mega ST running a BBS. In
those days a 20 mb (yes mb) hard drive cost $600+! Used SCSI hard
drives and stayed with SCSI equipment as I moved to Microsoft Windows on
a new computer. I keep 5 generations of tape and do the chore monthly
on a Travan 4/8. Just this past week, I added a DVD burner and now I'm
in the process of replacing the tape method with DVD's. I've found that
the greatest benefit of backing up was do to recovering files I thought
I didn't need anymore.

The best adds to a computer station are; a backup method, an UPS and a
"skin" on the keyboard. Gotta add an optical mouse, DSL, a home network
(daughter wants on the Internet and access to the printer G).
Hmmm.... and a scanner! More hmmmm... an USB thumb drive.

Holy flashback! I had a Mega ST back then too and I believe my Megafile 30
hard drive was ~$1200 CDN. Fortunately work paid for it. I used to back up
to a Colorado tape drive.

I was originally hired to run a PDP-9 with CORE MEMORY and a 20MB hard drive
that was the size of my washing machine at home. You would boot it from the
toggle switches on the front or paper tape. It needed to warm up for about
an hour before it was stable. The boss hooked up and amplifer and speaker to
one of the registers and with a special program we could play music. Ahh the
memories...

I'm only cross posting 'cause I don't now what NG Fuzzy is on.

Talk about "holy flashback"! I started my computer life in 1970 at age 40
on DGC's NOVA and Super NOVA. Also worked on PDP 11s through the 11-45.
Then very luckly went back to NOVAs.

Even more luckly finally ended my career in 1986 with HP 1000's and never had
to mess with DEC equipment again. I find it ironic that NOVA split from DEC
about 1968 and is still alive, healthy I don't know about(*). Also ironic that
DEC, the biggest in the world, went bankrupt and was bought out by Compac
which then finally went with HP.

(*) Just found that EMC Corp bought out DGC for $1.2 billion in 1999.
Then I found that "HP might buy EMC" in 2002.

Where and when will it all end? Makes one dizzy trying to keep up with
it all. :-)

Don
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Jeff Richards says...

[snip]

It's an old hobby horse of mine, but I maintain that if a backup set can't
be restored to a clean hard drive from a floppy boot then what's the point
of creating it? Most Windows-based tape backup software require Windows to
be re-installed before the system can be restored...

Ghost will do that. It's a DOS program, and all the boot disk needs to
bring up is DOS. That should recognize the disks (you might need FDISK
on the boot disk to bring up hopelessly ruined disks). Then, if you
have Ghost on the backup disks, it should unpack the images into new
directories.

I've done that to my C: drive in Win98. What would happen if you tried
to do this to a system using a non-DOS-based Windows, I don't know.
Since what Ghost makes are disk images or partition images, it's
possible a DOS boot disk might do it.

I back up onto a hard drive in a cartridge. It's a modest system, and
I get it onto a single backup disk, but it could certainly be done,
say weekly onto different cartridges. If you can raise your CD drive
from the boot disk, it should work that way, too.

--
R. N. (Dick) Wisan - Email:
- Snail: 37 Clinton Street, Oneonta NY 13820, U.S.A.
- Just your opinion, please, ma'am: No fax.

The NOVA was a beautiful architecture. We used to run 6 users on 32k and up
to 16 users on 128k machines - I have seen reports of 24 users. I ended up
using Novas on a chip (Fairchild 9440) in a 16-bit PC ISA card, with 4
users - I've still got the card, but I'm not sure I've got a PC I could
install it in! Then they produced the Eclipse (I have a DC 2000, but it
hasn't been powered up for a few years) and I had to rewrite our Business
Basic interpreter from RDOS to AOS - thousands of lines of assembler, but it
was all great fun.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP W95/W98
Don@NoSpam wrote in message ...

Fuzzy Logic wrote:

"Don Schmidt" Retired wrote in
:

Snip

Talk about "holy flashback"! I started my computer life in 1970 at age 40
on DGC's NOVA and Super NOVA. Also worked on PDP 11s through the 11-45.
Then very luckly went back to NOVAs.

Even more luckly finally ended my career in 1986 with HP 1000's and never
had
to mess with DEC equipment again. I find it ironic that NOVA split from
DEC
about 1968 and is still alive, healthy I don't know about(*). Also ironic
that
DEC, the biggest in the world, went bankrupt and was bought out by Compac
which then finally went with HP.

(*) Just found that EMC Corp bought out DGC for $1.2 billion in 1999.
Then I found that "HP might buy EMC" in 2002.

Where and when will it all end? Makes one dizzy trying to keep up with
it all. :-)

Don