HD backup using video?
46 messages in this thread
I head something a while ago about a device that would back up an Amiga
hard drive using a video recorder and an ordinary VHS tape. Does such a
device exist, is it reliable, what does it cost…etc.
Or was it just a rumour?
e. xit
Grant,
Here in Britain, I have an advert that advertises a new product. It says:
UK launch of "Video Streamer" – the low cost method of backing up your hard
disk. Store 800 Mbytes on a normal VHS tape using your existing video
recorder as a tape streamer… Simply connect to the parallel port.
Amiga, PC and Atari ST software available.
Price 225 pounds
I'm very tempted myself, but I too would like to know more about it before
committing myself.
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddhan,
Historically…VCR backup schemes have been unreliable. VCR's
simply aren't designed to capture perfectly every bit of information put
into them. For a TV program…that's ok. The picture quality degrades a
bit…but no big deal. With digital data…the loss of even one bit of a
single byte is too much loss. It must be reporduced exactly. Also, since
VCR's aren't "read after write" devices, there's no way to know that the
data was properly written out.
The way most VCR backup programs get around that is to make
multiple stores of the same data. They'll write the same "frame" over and
over again, hoping that at least one of the passes got it right….or at
the very least, that between all the passes, all the data was stored and
can be reconstructed.
Among other things…this causes the backup to be rather slow.
I have NO idea if the program you're discussing has somehow or
other overcome these problems and now is quick and absolutely
reliable…but my strong suspicion is that those problems still exists.
Don
Don,
Yes, I'd heard some time ago that VCR backup schemes were unreliable.
However, I hadn't heard anything about specific packages. If your
suspicion is still well founded, that such devices are unreliable, well,
I'm going to be having a problem in the near future when my paranoia mounts
to the point where I decide that I simply MUST make a backup of my 240Mb
hard disk.
Seems I'll have a choice of:
Using a cheap and potentially unreliable VCR method,
Spending a Saturday afternoon and early evening once a week shuffling a
stack of floppies (about 25 BOXES of them!),
Investing in a tape streamer, or
Investing in removable media devices like a Syquest, or…
At present, I try to keep my hair fom prematurely falling out by using LZ
to make archive files of whatever I happen to be working on at the moment,
knowing (or at least hoping) that all the other software can be
re-installed, and hoping that the worst won't happen until after I've got a
solution to the problem of making backups.
I've never yet had any problem whatsoever with a hard disk; neither has
there been a power cut when I've been saving anything. Maybe the solution
would be to get an uninterruptable power supply?
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddhan,
With a hard disk, the question isn't so much "if" if will fail, but rather
"when". Also, don't forget than an errant program or controller board
failure can do a nice job of trashing a HD, even if there is not a problem
with the drive itself.
One tactic that uses less disks is to only backup your data files and rely
on the originals to restore the programs, but, this becomes difficult to
manage as well, since you likely spent a lot of time on creating your disk
structure. I've used tape, floppies, and a networked second hard disk
(analogous for this purpose to using something like a Syquest) for backups
at various times on various systems. Of all of them, I prefer tape.
Now, if only an affordable tape unit would show up, I'd be all set. 8)
David
David,
Thanks for the advice. I know from experience that reinstalling tens of
megabytes of software on a hard disk can be a real pain. It seems that the
best bet would indeed be to go for a tape streamer. Or a Syquest.
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddhan,
I have a Syquest that I bought for backup purposes. What finally dawned on
me was that using the Syquest for backup is VERY expensive. So now I use
it like an extra hard disk and have three times as much data to back up!
Central Coast Software is offering to its customers a 250 Meg SCSI tape
drive that is supported by QuarterBackV5.0 for $499.00. So if you own some
of their software and the deals still going you might want to check it out.
patrick
Patrick,
Yes, I agree that using a Syquest for backup purposes _is_ rather
expensive. It does seem that the best solution is to use a tape streamer.
At least tapes aren't very expensive.
As I'm in the UK, I'm reluctant to purchase hardware from the US as this
tends to take weeks and is not as cheap as it seems.
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddhan:
I use BOTH a tape backup, and SyQuest backups on my system. I try and do a
tape backup at least every other day, and a SyQuest backup about every 2
weeks or so. I usually do the SyQuest backup right before I'm gonna do
some radical change to my system, so I can quickly restore it to the way
it was before the change if it doesn't work out.
// -Mike Schiller
\X/ AMIGA! On AutoPilot in sunny Fort Lauderdale
Shraddhan,
I think that I'm going for the tape streamer soon. I lost quite a bit of
work last year when my 80 meg drive bit the dust. I had a backup that was
less than a couple of weeks old, but had done some major updating and
reorganization in that two weeks. (I was _almost_ finished with my
reorganization process when a malfunctioning accellerator board trashed
the drive.) Once getting the tape drive, one needs to develop the
discipline to keep up with a backup regimen as well.
David
With a tape drive you DON'T need a regiment of discipline. The tapedrive
does an automatic backup each night while you sleep. You set up the
calender to once per hour if you wish, then it's free sailing, forever.
Neat stuff!
–Paul Still on AutoPilot
Paul (& Shraddhan),
I agree that backups can be timed successfully. However, one still has to
consider the mechanics of the backup process. If you don't include a
regimen of changing tapes, and retiring them before they wear out, you're
still at risk.
If I remember correctly, recommendations go something like this:
1. have a set of tapes, 1/day of the week for a daily backup (usually
partial)
2. have a set of tapes, 1/week of the month for a weekly full backup
3. have two sets of tapes, alternating each month for a monthly full
backup.
Of course, these recommendations are for a business rather than for a home
user, but they serve to illustrate a point. It's best to have a regimen
of changing the tape in your drive as well as just having the automatic
timed backup.
David
David,
Only a few hours ago, running a program I'd never used before, the computer
locked up while about to save a file. I waited and waited and nothing
seemed to be happening, so I reset the computer. During rebooting, a
requester popped up to tell me that the disk DH0: (my boot partition) could
not be validated, and booting stopped at that point.
That's it, I thought, I've been reading and sending messages all weekend
about get a backup system for my hard disk, and it's gone and died on me!
Not so. I turned the computer off, paced round the room for a few minutes,
turned it on again, and everything worked fine! I _must_ be lucky!
You mention that one needs to develop the discipline to keep up with a
backup regimen as well. Well, some time ago, I wrote a little program for
automatically running other programs after a set period (days or weeks).
With the CRON-type programs I've seen, you specify the time when an event
is to happen and then the event is processed when that time comes round.
My program works differently in that it works on elapsed time. So if I
schedule a program to be run every four days, and I go away for a week,
when I come back and boot the machine, the program will be run
automatically, regardless of the time of day or day of the week. If making
a backup can be achieved through calling a program (or executing a script)
with no further intervention apart from loading a tape into the streamer,
then the whole process will be totally automated by adding a line to my
user-startup.
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddhan,
Ami-Back comes with a Scheduler program that lets you set the days and
times you want the backup(s) to begin. Of course this means that you leave
the computer on if your backup is scheduled for 3 AM. Hmmm, I guess you
could put your power strip on a timer, and drag Ami-Scheduler into the
WBStartup drawer or add it to the startup-script. But I'd get a very good
timer switch.
Chris
Shraddhan,
Glad that you didn't lose anything. That must have been a sinking
feeling, no?
Please see my reply to Paul about my meaning. It's best to have a system
of multiple backup tapes that works for you, and religiously keep up the
regimen to gain the maximum benefits.
David
Shraddhan:
Since you do so much DTP work and I am sure that you'd like quick access
to tons of fonts, you may want to consider a removable media hard disk
drive like the Syqyest… that way, you can back up to a couple of carts,
and also store lots of fonts and graphics, and be able to access them very
quickly.
// Michael
\X/ …on AutoPilot
Shraddhan,
Even with a UPS, that will only prevent problems with short
duration power losses. It won't do a thing to prevent your drive from
having an error that trashes your disk…or from the drive itself going
bad. Same thing with errant software, or a virus program…they could wipe
out the information on your disk.
I'd suggest a tape drive, but baring that…I'd take the time to do
a full backup to floppy, and then do incrementals from that point on.
Don
Don,
I guess I've just been very lucky over the last couple of years, not having
had any problems whatsoever with a hard disk. However, when I bought my
previous Amiga, I nearly lost the original system software due to a virus
that came with the Amiga. (Yes, on the software packaged with it!)
Luckily, I had access to uninfected disks from the Amiga at work and was
able to destroy the virus, otherwise I would have been a very irate
customer indeed.
Now, I certainly don't want to be in that position again. Neither can I
really face the prospect of backing up to floppies, so it seems I'm going
to have to invest in a tape streamer.
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
I have seen a similar device (really only a cable for the serial port and
the mono video port with some added electronics + some software) here in
Denmark at DKK 985 incl. 25% VAT (= USD 180 or 90 pounds).
The (unattended) backup speed is about 40 MB pr. hour and actual video
pictures are generated and stored on the tape between different backups, so
you can use your own TV set to search for backups. Restore of single
directories is possible as well as overwriting a backup.
It was reviewed by a Danish magazine and was praised as being inexpensive
as compared to a tape streamer, but there is always a risk of data loss. It
was important to use only high quality tapes e.g SUPER VHS. A 34 MB backup
was performed on a high quality video recorder and 1-2 KB were lost using
one brand of S-VHS tape, but 3 other brands were OK. Using standard or high
grade tapes resulted in data losses in the 0.01-0.2% range regardless of
tape brand.
Making frequent backups may compensate for the potential data losses, as it
probably never will be the same data lost from two different tapes. Also
backing up important new files to disk.
The product is from Germany and comes with a tape with 160 MB Fred Fish
disks and is sold by Scanteam, Aarhus. Phone +45-8618 1600, FAX +45-8618
1601. 10AM – 6.30PM.
– J0RGEN …..by Whap! from DENMARK
Joergen,
Thanks for the information about the VCR backup device. I like the price,
but at 40MB per hour, it would take 6 hours or more to back up my hard
disk, longer if I would have to change tapes.
As for the loss of data, this worries me as I would like to think that any
backup I made would be 100% accurate. Doing two backups in order to make
sure would take over 12 hours!
However, I'll bear it in mind, in case I get desperate 😉
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddan,
For the equivalent of 225 pounds, you can buy a SCSI tape streamer for
your Amiga _and_ pay customs, probably. I've seen 150MB tape backup units
here for $350.
Note that video tape backups never caught on in the PC market, where
they've been available for years. I think there's a reason for this…
Speed and reliability don't seem too hot.
Denny,
Am I correct in assuming that if I nip out and buy me any old SCSI tape
streamer, bring it home, and plug it into the back of my computer, I will
be immediately able to back up my hard disk? I mean, the fact that the
supplier thought I'd be plugging the thing into a PC would be totally
unimportant?
I have spent half an hour or more looking for adverts for tape streamers.
They're a rare beast. Besides, NONE of the adverts mention whether their
units are SCSI. Also, there is a wide variety of prices – from 249 pounds
for an external 40/120MB unit for an XT/AT or PS2 to 746 pounds for a 60MB
streamer, details unknown.
Am I correct in assuming that a tape streamer would have to be able to
store the whole contents of the largest partition on my hard disk? Like, I
guess I couldn't use a 60MB streamer to back up a 100MB partition on two
tapes?
As for making backups to a VCR, from information I've received I calculate
that this would take more than a full working day to do 🙁
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddhan,
You can get a Wangtek 5150ES streaming tape drive for around $350 its SCSI
it uses 150MB tapes DC6150 variety, and software like AMI-BACK 2.0 will
append files to the tape, and allow you to add additional tapes to the
backup. There are other streaming tape drives that are SCSI and that use
larger tape sizes (250MB). I believe one is a 5250ES by Wangtek. I'd call
Moonlighter Software Development and see if they have any streaming tape
specials left. These would be remanufactured drives with their software
Ami-Back.
The VCR sounds interesting if only because many of us own them, but the
streaming tape seems the easiest and safest route, and since using one from
1989 I wouldn't want to use anything else for the price of tape is a lot
less than SyQuest cartridges and I've got them too to use. I use a Syquest
cart to backup a partition on occassion just so I can defrag it. I use
verify with Ami-Back make sure that the partition is backed up safely and
then reformat and restore that partition from the Syquest. Could use the
tape just as easily, then I do another compare, and then reuse the
cartridge on the next partition. Easier than using a VCR. Plus I can walk
away and watch the telly while the tape is streaming, can't do that with no
stinking floppies!
We don't need no stinking floppies (badges)
Chris
Chris,
A 150MB tape streamer for $350 sounds like good value to me.
Unfortunately, I'm in Britain, and although computer equipment here tends
to be more expensive than the exchange rate would justify, I'd prefer to
buy locally – unless of course the savings would be great enough. I've got
a catalogue here which quotes 746 pounds for a 60MB streamer, 885 pounds
for a 250MB streamer (May 1992). I wonder if they ever sell any?!
The Syquest option appears to be rather more expensive.
I've spent many a boring hour backing up a 40MB drive onto floppies, and
there are few things that I'd like less to do.
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddhan,
I can understand your loyalty to the local vendors, but if I had to either
face hours of changing floppies ever again or buying a tape streamer from
an overseas vendor, my bank draft would be in the next international next
day airmail pouch headed abroad. 40MB? Try backing up several 100MB drives
and ten Syquest cartridges.
Chris
Chris,
It's not _only_ a matter of loyalty to local vendors; it's also the fact
that if I can buy a tape streamer locally at a reasonable price, I won't
have to wait weeks while the tape streamer I bought from the US sits in the
customs shed at Heathrow airport, waiting for someone to have a look at it
and decide how much is 17.5% of the selling price, so that they can add
this on, plus a few more dollars for their trouble!
Of course, if I can make enough of a saving by importing the thing, maybe I
can afford to wait a few weeks for it to arrive…
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddhan,
Ah, I see, yes customs does slow down commerce, plus the added
duties on the price + time would cause me to consider the consequences of
such a purchase.
Well hope you find a solution,
Chris
Chris,
As it was the August Bank Holiday here in the UK today (Monday). I have
been waiting for tomorrow so I can start hunting down a tape streamer. I
might still order from the US if UK prices are too exorbitant!
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddhan:
"…I will be immediately able to back up my hard disk?"
Well, you'll need some software (don't use HDBackup that comes with 2.04.
If you have to use it, use BRU directly or you may have problems).
You should have no trouble hooking up any QIC tape drive that supports:
a) SCSI-1 direct or SCSI-2 direct commands
b) ASYNCHRONOUS communication (synchronous will work but is not as
flexible)
MoonLighter Software Development bundles AMI-BACK 2.0 with a refurbished
Archive Viper 250 Meg tape drive for US$350.00. I have this system and I
really like it. With a single 250 meg tape, I can do individual backups of
all my partitions (4 partitions over two drives), and then update the
individual partitions as I see fit.
Some software (like AMIBACK) allows for data compression, so you could
conceivably fit 100MB of data on a 60 MB disk.
Most of the drives out there that you'll see advertised are for PC's and
are connected to them via their floppy controller. Currently, there is no
software support on the Amiga (that I am aware of) for these types of Tape
Drives.
// Michael
\X/ …on AutoPilot
Michael,
Thanks for the information and advice. You're right about DTP – the main
reason I rushed into buying a new Amiga with a larger hard disk was that my
old 42M disk was on the verge of overflowing, what with all the fonts and
whatever, and I calculated that it would take me just two months to fill up
a 100MB hard disk.
The idea of having exchangeable 44MB or 88MB disks looks quite appealing –
until the day when I need two fonts, one of which is on one disk, and the
other on the other one. Then I would wonder if I had not been better to
have invested in a second 200MB hard disk.
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddhan,
The Syquest would work great for your fonts etc. What you have to do is
have enough room on your hard drive or RAM: to hold the data for a
particular project. You can change the Syquest carts anytime so all you
need is a handy spot to put the data when it happens to be on two (or more)
carts.
One caution though – you MUST format and partition all your syquest carts.
exactly the same! I then use rename to give each one a unique name so I
can keep them straight. I keep about 40megs free on my HD for when what I
need is on a different cart.
Syquest is cost effective as a HD replacement (it gets cheaper per unit the
more carts you buy) but not as a backup solution.
Patrick
Patrick,
Thanks for the tip.
I reckon that for the time being at least, a tape streamer is what I need.
When my hard disk begins to overflow with rarely used files, I assume I
will be able to keep the least used files archived on tape. This might not
be as convenient as a Syquest, but a lot cheaper.
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Michael:
Is the "Archive Viper" you mentioned internal or external? I'd have to
have an external unit. All bays in my A2000 are filled. 🙁
Wayne
Wayne… the Archive Viper I have, I received as a 'bare' drive. I
purchased an external case that could hold two 5.25" devices and mounted
it in there along with a Toshiba XM3201B CD-ROM Drive. I' very happy with
the setup. I could easily unplug the external case from the Amiga and plug
it into a scsi controller on my PC and have immediate acces to the Tape
Drive and CDROM drive on that machine as well. There is a file in the
AmigaUser Library called EXTEXP.LHA that describes how I set up the
external case, tape drive and CD-ROM drive.
// Michael
\X/ …on AutoPilot
Michael:
Thanks for the info. It sounds like an external, two-bay case would work
perfectly for me as well. I'd like to add both CD-ROM and Streaming Tape
to my setup.
Wayne
Michael,
I've seen a couple of messages saying to not use HDBackup. What's the
matter with it? I've been meaning to back up my drive and reformat under
the new FFS for more space and speed and HDBackup is what I have to use.
Why should I not use it?
(I DO have one other program that was given to me at a developer's meeting
in Toronto. It's called Back-Pac. Anyone have any comments on that?)
Malcolm
Malcolm…
HDBackup is the interface to the underlying BRU program (as I understand
it anyway). Many folks have reported that trying to restore using
HDBackup simply doesn't work, but they also report that using BRU directly
is ok.
Personally, I use AmiBack from MoonLighter.
// Michael
\X/ …on AutoPilot
Michael,
Thanks for the info.
Malcolm
Malcolm,
I can speak a little about Back-Pac – it's a relative of mine. It
started out in life called "saf-T-net", which I wrote, and which was one
of the first commercial hard disk backup utilities available. It's only
competition at the time of publication were two programs: a commercial
offering called HardHat, which basically took approximately 20 minutes to
fill a single floppy disk, and a freely-distributable alpha release of a
program called BRU, written by Fred Fish. HardHat disappeared, and BRU
eventually grew up a little bit, and is now the backbone behind the
HDBackup front-end.
BRU was the reason I wrote saf-T-net. <grin> It's also the major
reason why I'd advise against using HDBackup. Aside from some basic
design decisions in BRU that are done for cross-machine portablitiy
issues, BRU is a reasonable implementation. Unfortunately, the biggest
problem with it is that it uses a lot of space for the backed up data –
much more than any of the other available choices. On top of that, I've
heard of too many horror stories of folks who have trusted HDBackup, only
to run into severe problems when they needed to restore their data from
backup.
As to BackPac, I can't speak for the changes that the current developer
made to my original, as I've not seen the product — only the demo version
that was uploaded here a while ago. I know he re-designed the interface a
little bit (for the better), adding a more 2.0-like 3-D look. The basic
engine of the program was always quite reliable for me (I used saf-T-net
quite a lot :-), and I trusted it. It's major problem was a limited
design that kept it from growing – it didn't support any backup medium
other than floppy disks. I stopped using it when I added a tape drive to
my system.
Hope this helps…
– BobR
Bob,
Oh, yes. I remember now that I was told that Back-Pac was an descendant of
saf-T-net. It's probably what I'll use. Thanks for the info.
Malcolm
Malcolm:
I've been using HDBackup for several months. I don't really like it, but
it does work. I've used it to do exactly what you want to do… Backup,
reformat FFS, and restore. I don't have any fancy backup drive. I just
use floppies. Trying to use both floppy drives at the same time seemed a
bit clumsy so I just use one.
Wayne
Shraddhan,
Ami-Back 2.0 will support streaming onto multiple tapes, so you could use
tapes smaller than your partition. But I'd try to get a tape drive of the
same capacity or bigger for simplicity's sake.
I know Ami-Back works with just about any SCSI tape backup automatically.
I haven't tried Quarterback with SCSI tape backups, but I understand it's
pretty good at working with most drives as well.
I also heard of a 'do it yourself' version of VHS tape backup and possibly
another outfit in Germany doing a similar product.
Daniel,
Having heard of the lack of reliability of VCR backup, and their slow
speed, I think I'll steer well clear.
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddhan
I've only just picked up this thread, but I have heard various stories
about VCR backup systems. The problem is that VHS quality is often very
poor, with lots of tape dropouts (that you don't see, because of the
dropout compensation) … as has already been said, a single bit lost in
data is one bit too many.
Personally, I would'nt trust valuable data to a system that relied on a
domestic video machine. I might consider it with a Betamax machine, or an
S-VHS .. but not with conventional VHS.
I know that there is at least one relatively cheap tape streamer available
in the UK … Tim Arnot (editor of the ICPUG journal) has one, and uses it
to do HD backups. Unfortunately, I can't recall the details.
Mike (UK … but currently in Texas)