Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!pilchuck!del From: del@pilchuck.Data-IO.COM (Erik Lindberg) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: WARNING! FASTBACK may corrupt your brain! (B.S.) Message-ID: <769@pilchuck.Data-IO.COM> Date: Tue, 8-Dec-87 19:11:58 EST Article-I.D.: pilchuck.769 Posted: Tue Dec 8 19:11:58 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 13-Dec-87 16:37:32 EST References: <703@vaxine.UUCP> Reply-To: del@pilchuck.Data-IO.COM (Erik Lindberg) Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA Lines: 64 Keywords: hard disk, lost files, trojan horse I have seen many people slander Fastback for various reasons. To date I am not sure why they assume Fifth Generation systems is at fault. I have seen Fastback in use on dozens (literally > 20) of systems. I have seen problems, but they have *always* been attributed to the machine or installation, *never* to Fastback. In article <703@vaxine.UUCP> cpc@vaxine.UUCP (Chris Cullen) writes: >I have a 30-meg Seagate st238 RLL hard drive for my vanilla IBM PC, with an >Adaptec ACB-2070A RLL controller card. I had gone backup-less for quite a I am running exactly this configuration on one of my machines (oops, not vanilla IBM, it is a clone XT). On another machine I am running a Maxtor 1140 which formats to 196Meg using the 2070a. One of the partitions on the drive is 134Megabytes, which means a non-standard parsittion using non-standard sector sizes. Fastback has no trouble with either configuration. Just to make sure I wasn't fooling myself, before I wrote this message I restored the 30 Meg hard drive from scratch, and ran CRC's on 5 megabytes of files and found them to all be intact. >Fifth Generation systems, the makers. Didn't take long. And I quote: >"Yeah, we don't know anyone who's gotten RLL's to work with anything but >a Western Digital controller". You would think that a backup program only Personally, I would say that people don't tend to call F.G. just to say: "Hey, I just installed this with an ACB2070A and guess what? It works!" The Western Digital RLL controllers far outnumber Adaptec simply because almost every drive/controller combo, and virtually every hardcard is delivered with a WD controller. The fact they haven't heard of anyone that got it to work says nothing. He didn't say "No, this doesn't work with it". >As far as I'm concerned, Fastback is the ultimate trojan horse. I'm sure >it was not intentional. However, criminal negligence is certainly indicated. >It's obvious from the brief phone conversation that they KNOW that using >Fastback on some varieties of hardware (what OTHER configurations are also >problems?) will corrupt the source data. NOWHERE in their documentation What can I say about this statement, except that in my experience F.G. is a responsible company that listens to it's customers and has a genuine concern that their product work correctly. What I wonder is what your attitude was when you talked with F.G. such that they were unresponsive to your problem. You said you had a vanilla IBM PC. What revision? As I mentioned in the first line of this article, I *have* seen situations where Fastback had problems. In all but one case the problem was traceable to the BIOS, and replacing the BIOS with a decent BIOS cured the problem. The one other problem was a flakey floppy disk controller, and replacement effected a cure. I suggest you get a BIOS upgrade to an XT BIOS from IBM, or purchase a Phoenix BIOS (out of the computer shopper). Then try Fastback again. Of course, I doubt that you will pay any attention to this. >I can only recommend that you > A- NOT BUY FASTBACK > B- TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW NOT TO BUY FASTBACK > C- QUESTION YOUR PRESENT BACKUP METHOD VERY CAREFULLY > I can only recommend that you A- BUY FASTBACK B- IF YOU HAVE TROUBLES, QUESTION YOUR MACHINE FIRST C- ALWAYS QUESTION YOUR PRESENT BACKUP METHOD VERY CAREFULLY -- del (Erik Lindberg) uw-beaver!tikal!pilchuck!del