QB Quirks
During a recent experience to repartition my hard drive, I've worked with
QB (v 5.0.3) a bit and am a bit disappointed with some aspects of the
program. I'm probably not the first person to go into this, but here are
the "quirks" I found, that I'd like to see fixed:
When multitasking QB with ProWrite, I saved a text file from PW that was
to be archived (after QB built the catalog but before it went to back up
the file). When QB reached the modified file, the backup hung. I could
only restart the entire backup (1 disk from the end of the 25-disk
backup!). I'd like to see the program at least not lock up, and
preferably multitask better by prompting me to update the catalog or skip
the file.
You could try to get around the above problem by telling users not to
multitask, but that's not the best solution, IMHO. The following
describes strange behavior with selective restores, which are confusing
and, when a backup program acts strangely, cause concern over the
integrity of the backup (even if there is no connection, any "buggy"
appearance makes one uneasy about the backup).
Selective restores sometimes don't request volumes that are needed right
away and sometimes ask for ones that aren't needed at all. Using two
drives to restore, I started the restore with volume 1 in df0: to load the
catalog (df1: is empty). Leaving volume 1 in the drive, I PROCEED with
the restore and while the program waits for me to click on START it shows
the messages "DF0: Ready" and "DF1: Insert #23". Okay, I insert #23 in
df1: and click START. The program puts up a requester to insert #22 in
df0. Why didn't QB request #22 before I hit START?
Then later it would say "Insert #24" even though the program was jumping
to a later disk in the catalog and didn't really need #24. Why didn't the
program message request the correct volume that would be required? That's
a question about usability, not a request for a technical explanation.
I'm sure there are logical reasons that QB is programmed to do things this
way and am not asking for an explanation of why it happens. Please fix
these aspects of QB.