Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mcnc!rti!bcw
From: bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec.micro
Subject: Re: Rainbow MSDOS 2.11 BACKUP-utility piping?
Summary: Rainbow BACKUP utility
Message-ID: <2473@rti.UUCP>
Date: 28 Sep 88 02:51:26 GMT
References: <138*mjolsnes@vax.elab.unit.uninett>
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, RTP, NC
Lines: 42

In article <138*mjolsnes@vax.elab.unit.uninett>, mjolsnes%vax.elab.unit.uninett@norunix.BITNET (Stig Frode Mjolsnes) writes:
> The BACKUP.EXE in MSDOS 2.11 from DEC has lots of nice screens etc.
> The online documentation claims that it is possible to indirect a file
> which contains a list of files to be backed up, instead of using
> filespecification (with metacharacters) directly.  This is obviously
> useful for more "selective" backups.  Problem:  I cannot get it to
> work!  Any experienced users out there?
> 
> Can any public domain software handle this delicate task of backing up
> and restoring reliably on the Rainbow?
> 
BACKUP.EXE in MS-DOS 2.11 from DEC is, in my opinion, practically useless.
Almost all the hard disks I've ever seen have too many files to be backed
up with this program - it's not obvious to me what was on the author's
mind (if anything) when he wrote it.

Another reader posted a suggestion that it was possible to use a version
of BACKUP from a PC-DOS machine.  This might be a reasonable solution,
if you don't mind running something which won't be supported by anybody
and if you don't mind the bending of the license rules.  A better alternative
would be to get the version of MS-DOS 3.1 from Suitable Solutions (about
$100 US, plus $50/year for support which is not included in the purchase
price - I don't know what foreign shipping costs would be).   Besides a
reasonable BACKUP utility, it also contains support for hard disk drives
greater than 8 MB (and the superior MS-DOS 3.x disk allocation scheme which
speeds up file allocations), and lots of other things which 2.11 doesn't
have.

We are running this version of DOS 3.1 and have not yet found any serious
problems.  So far, only one PD program (and no commercial programs) that
we have tried on it has broken (it did some low-level hacking & apparently
broke when some addresses changed in 3.1 - fortunately it is not so
interesting on 3.1 as it was on 2.11 so we haven't been too unhappy).

Suitable Solutions can be reached at

	Suitable Solutions
	1700 Wyatt Drive, Suite 12
	Santa Clara, California 95054
	408-727-9090

Bruce C. Wright