[Coco] [Color Computer] Re: [coco] HD backups

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 06 January 2007 08:59, david_g21120 wrote:
>--- In ColorComputer at yahoogroups.com, "George's Coco Address"
>
><yahoo at ...> wrote:
>>   I looked around on RTSI for a backup utility under OS9. The only
>
>I have
>
>> found, copies the whole drive.
>>
>>  Is there a backup utility that will only backup the most recent
>
>and
>
>> recently updated files? As any coco HD user knows, backing up the
>
>entire
>
>> drive takes many hours. At least, on MY drive it takes about
>
>thirteen hours.
>
>>  Since I got the external case and PS from Frank Swygert(thanks,
>
>Frank!) I
>
>> now have my 2nd drive working again and need to do a backup.
>>
>> George
>
>There is a utility called bak that will make recursive backups of
>directories (or complete hard drives) to floppy's or another hard
>drive (but it doesn't compress them) it was written in 1991 by Kieth
>Alphanso, and sold through CoCoPro
>Usage: bak <sourcedir> <destinationdir> -r
>
>The program requires makdir and copy to be in memory or in your
>execution directory. If you can't find it, let me know I have a copy.
>it works with OS-9 ver 1.00.00 and newer, it also works under all
>versions of NitrOS-9.
>
>Hope this helps.

There is also bru-1.2, a fairly complete solution, but while the backups 
can be written in about 8 or 9 minutes a 720k disk, the recovery is 
watching grass grow slow at about 35-40 minutes per disk read and put 
back on your hard drive.  But one makes way more backups than recoveries 
in the ideal world.  The speed diffs are related to the interleave factor 
on the written disk, if you want write speed, ilv=8, and this adds 
several minutes to the read time because the disk has to go all the way 
around to get the next sector due to all the processing it does between 
sectors moved, either way.  It does not compress either.

Humm, this leads me to think of another use for a ramdisk that's bigger 
than a floppy.  Use it like amanda does its holding disk area.  Pull the 
files in, compress them too if they are compressable, and put them in the 
ramdisk until a disk's full is available, then write that at full speed 
to the floppy which it should be able to do at very nearly the same speed 
as the initial format.

That would I'd think, save enough time, not to mention the wear and tear 
on the floppy's heads, to allow compression to be done.

When recovering, get the ramdisk going, and read the disk at full speed 
into the ramdisk.  That should not require playing with the interleave 
factor, and would cut wear on the floppy's heads by 95% or more, emphasis 
on more.

Now if I just had time to do it...  Sigh.   And I haven't looked at that 
code in a decade plus.  The original version FWIW, was written by the 
exact same Michael Sweet, he was DodgeColt on delphi then, who is now the 
head honcho at Easy Software, home of CUPS, the Common Unix Printing 
System for all linux distros.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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Copyright 2007 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.