said:
>
> >Today, I blew several shots of
> >compressed air into the drive. Immediately after that, I
> >successfully backed up two partitions totalling 800 meg., and restored a
> >few files from an older tape, which had accidentally gotten deleted from
> >my hard drive.
Steven replied:
> Sounds like a dust problem. The cleaning cartridge can only remove oxides
> from the heads. Too much dust will make the position sensors unreliable.
Could be . . . although the few times I've opened the case, the amount of dust
evident inside was surprisingly low. I was told that DDS-2 drives did not have
position sensors (or maybe that was some _other_ type of sensor ?).
> Eventually, the unit will need to be opened and the capstan rollers will
> need to be cleaned.
Is this just a matter of removing the drive itself, for proper access, or are you
suggesting that I would need to physically disassemble the drive, at least
partially ? Can this not alternately be accomplished with some sort of vacuuming,
or long cleaning swabs + denatured alcohol ? The drive's manual states that no
user service is required, other than periodic use of the cleaning cartridge, and
that opening the unit would void the warranty. Maybe they should make a cleaning
cartridge that cleans the capstan rollers . . . .
Jordan
Harry Motin wrote:
> I'm curious. What backup programs to you use? Can you backup to
> different media, using these programs, beside your tape drive.
On the OS/2 side, I prefer BackMaster (which seems to be kaput on the market,
though I'm in the process of confirming this), but also have Back Again 2000. For
NT, I have BA/II workstation, also from CDS. I have had some anomalies and
difficulties with the latter two, and consequently don't use them quite as often,
nor am I as familiar with all of their capabilities. BackMaster is definitely tape
only, although it supports a variety of tape formats: older QIC/80, Travan, DAT.
Not sure about the CDS programs, which seemed to be mainly for DAT format, but
Brent told me that the forthcoming edition of BA/2000 Server edition (see my note
in the General List digest) will back up to a number of other media, incl.
CD-spanning.
To be clear here, I believe in redundancy, esp. for critical stuff. Therefore, I
also do partition Image backups via PowerQuest's Drive Image. (These are very
different backup approaches, and complement each other. You can't just go in and
extract specific files from a partition image.) So far, this has worked fine for
Warp, but my NT partitions got much too large for CDs to hold them some time ago,
so I copy those onto tape anyway. DI 4.0 introduced a direct-image-to-CD feature +
CD-spanning, but it never worked on my Plextor burner, and I initiated an "APAR"
with PowerQuest about this. Perhaps I'll have to try the competing GHOST, which is
also supposed to have these features, even though I'm rather wary of having any
further dealings with Symantec.
> If so, why don't you try installing a spare hard drive, if you've got one, and
> backing up to that. Bypass the tape altogether before it fails on your
> at the least opportune time (you know that it will!!). If you do not
> have a spare HDD, perhaps some space somewhere on your existing
> installed hard drive? Best to secure a reliable backup system as soon as
> you can.
Several reasons: I insist on having **OFF-site** as well as on-site backup. That's
very important, and mandates some form of removeable media. DAT is faster than
most other backup methods. I spent major $$ on the tape drive and media supplies,
so I'm going to do whatever I can to get the value out of it. I do have a 2nd. H/D
in this box, but most of the free space on it is being reserved for ECS and a
future maintenance partition for NT. No plans to add a 3rd. drive ! I might
possibly replace one of these two H/Ds with a larger one, but it still won't
satisfy the key requirement of Point #1. I would only let H/D space be a very
temporary resting place for a backup, en route to moving it to removeable media. A
close relative had a nearly new IBM hard drive (said to be one of the best
available, at the time) die on her. She got a replacement H/D for free, but with
no adequate backup regime in place, the lost time, expense (for the consultant who
reconstructed her W98, installed app.s, and data -- as best he could), plus
considerable aggravation, testifies to the limitations of storing your backups
where they can perish along with the hard drive. My relative is not at all
technically adept, but had she had good (and sufficiently recent) partition images
stored elsewhere, she could have picked up more or less where she left off,
quickly, with no or minimal consultant fees.
I don't have much interest in removeable hard drives. I suppose a fully installed
dupe spare is within the realm of possibility, but keeping it up to date would be a
pain.
Jordan
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