Liren Large Software Subsidy 16

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What Tape Back-up? __________________ What Tape Back-up? Tape Rotation Tracking & Back-up Controller (c) 1991, 1992 by Angel Babudro, all rights reserved. I. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 II. COPYRIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 III. LICENSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 IV. TECHNICAL SUPPORT (HOW TO REACH ME) . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Official Distribution Bulletin Boards . . . . . . . . . . 2 V. GENERAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 VI. FILE LIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 VII. WHY USE WTB? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 VIII. What Tape Back-up? COMMAND LINE OPTIONS . . . . . . . . . 3 A. Specifying the Number of Tape Sets . . . . . . . . . . 4 B. Specifying a Range of Hard Disk Drives . . . . . . . . 4 1. With disk statistics (/D) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Without disk statistics (/N) . . . . . . . . . . . 4 C. Using Other Tape Software (/T) . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 D. Backing-up Modified Files Only (/M) . . . . . . . . . 5 E. Appending to the End of a Tape (/A) . . . . . . . . . 5 F. Command-line Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 IX. USING What Tape Back-up? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 A. Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 B. Cancel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 C. Verify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 D. Set-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 E. Selecting Tape Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 X. REGISTERING What Tape Back-up? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 - i - What Tape Back-up? __________________ I. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY By using this software and documentation ("WTB") you must accept this disclaimer of warranty: WTB is provided "as is" without any warranties or conditions, expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, those concerning merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. By using WTB, you are expressly releasing the author, Angel Babudro, from any liability resulting from the use of this software and documentation. You must assume the entire risk of using WML. Please test and supervise WML thoroughly before relying on it. II. COPYRIGHT WTB is owned and copyright (c) 1989-1992 by Angel Babudro, all rights reserved. You may only use and/or distribute WTB under the License terms below. III. LICENSE 1. WTB is being distributed as Freeware. There is no registration fee and you are licensed to use it for an unlimited time. 2. You may keep as many backup copies of WTB as you wish and you may run WTB simultaneously on as many computers as you like. You are granted the right to share WTB with others, as long as you distribute the original files exactly as you received them, with all associated files included. 3. Under no circumstances may you charge any fee or receive any other form of consideration for distributing the WTB files without express written consent from the copyright holder, Angel Babudro, other than to charge a fee of not more than US$6 (six dollars) for the media and/or service of distribution. IV. TECHNICAL SUPPORT (HOW TO REACH ME) Gripes, moans, wails, throes, and throngs are promptly rejected, but all other types of communications & modest crowds are graciously accepted (and thank goodness for that!). I can be reached via mail or BBS. The BBSs below have current versions of all of my software and I will get messages left there for me. Unless you are in dire straits, please write rather than telephone with questions about WTB - my business is selling my - 1 - What Tape Back-up? __________________ time so it's hard on my future to give it away for free; if you must phone then please be kind & send a little green my way (perhaps by registering one of my other software packages, such as What Mailing List?). Thank you for your understanding. __________________ Angel Babudro, "Organic Computer Wizardry", PO Box 132, Paonia, CO 81428 USA (303) 527-6756 Monday-Friday 10am-6pm Mountain Time Official Distribution Bulletin Boards On bulletin boards I use the first name "Angelo" since it avoids gender confusion. Scan for the file name WJS*.* to locate the latest version of WJS. All six of my software packages are free downloads on these systems: East Coast Excalibur, Central NY (315) 736-3792 USR Dual My software can be FREQed from this board via RBBS Net address A:954/401, FIDO Net address 1:26501, or ICN Net 91:315/101. West Coast Researcher's, So Cal (805) 949-8151 USR Dual Conference #136 is OrganicSftwr - enter "J;136" before downloading, browsing for topics of interest, and/or leaving messages to me. My software can also be found on many of the nations larger bulletin boards, such as Exec-PC and Channel 1. V. GENERAL What Tape Back-up? (WTB) helps you manage sets of back-up tapes for multiple hard disk partitions. It might be helpful to use WTB with a single partition (C:), but it's when you've got more of those suckers out there that it really shines. I've got six partitions, C: through H:, and I used to hate backing them up one- by-one or trying to develop a batch file that was sophisticated enough to handle every twist I dreamed up (like my rotating verification idea). So I wrote WTB. WTB is provided with the commands for CMS Jumbo 2.5, CMS Jumbo 2.54, and Mountain 5.x software. If you have other tape software you can configure WTB to work with it quite easily using an ASCII text editor or just about any word processor that can edit ASCII text. To use WTB you will need: * PC with MS/PC-DOS 3.3 or higher - 2 - What Tape Back-up? __________________ * About 256k of free memory (the more the better, since most tape software will use it as a buffer to speed up operations). * Monochrome or colour monitor * A tape drive * CMS Jumbo 2.5x or Mountain 5.x tape software or some other tape software which can be controlled via batch WTB stores your configuration within the executable file WTB.EXE. In order to do this, WTB.EXE must remain in its full size, unmodified by such things as LZEXE (which is otherwise a wonderful product) or PKLite (a similar product). VI. FILE LIST The following files comprise the complete What Tape Back-up? package: * WTB.EXE -- the executable (programme) file * WTB.WP -- WordPerfect document file * WTB.TXT -- ASCII document file * WTB.CMD - tape software command file * FKEY.LST -- a support file * ORDER.FRM -- order form for all of my products * FILE_ID.DIZ & DESC.SDI -- Description files for BBSs. You can delete these from your hard disk, but please distribute them with any copies of WTB you share VII. WHY USE WTB? I wrote What Tape Back-up? as a way to manage and track my ___________________ sets of back-up tapes. Although most tape software (including Mountain and CMS) have an automatic scheduling feature, this does not help in tracking which tape was last used, the dates of each back-up, and whether or not the tapes were verified for accuracy. Besides this, I believe that making it simple helps to get it done. I'd've sooner cared to stub my toe than remember manual back-up procedures for 200Mb of grey matter in electronic form... What Tape Back-up? makes things simple. Set it up once, put __________________ it in your computer's menu, and run once a day or whenever you feel you need a back-up tape. VIII. What Tape Back-up? COMMAND LINE OPTIONS To use WTB with default values just type, "wtb" at the DOS prompt. In a few seconds three windows will appear: One with - 3 - What Tape Back-up? __________________ statistics about your disk drives (the Disk Window), another with statistics about your back-up tape set (the Tape Window), and a third with information on how the current back-up will be performed (the Back-up Window). Note: I refer to "sets" of tapes because many people, like myself, use more than one tape per back-up. I strongly recommend using at least three sets of back-up tapes. This way if the worst possible case happens -- your system goes down will making a back-up -- you will have other tape copies from which to retrieve your data. WTB has the following command-line syntax: WTB [#oftapes] [/Dxy] [/Nxy] [/T] [/A] [/M] Note: DOS command-line options are NOT case sensitive. You can use upper- or lower-case letters as you wish. A. Specifying the Number of Tape Sets If you use more than one set of tapes to back-up (use at least three sets of tapes!) use the command "WTB x" where "x" is the number of tapes you use. For example, "WTB 4" would manage four sets of tapes. B. Specifying a Range of Hard Disk Drives 1. With disk statistics (/D) You may only want to back-up a certain range of hard disk drives rather than all of your drives. Say, for example, you have hard disk drives C: through J: and a CD-ROM as drive H: You will only want to back-up C: through J: since H: is in little danger of being lost. To do this, use the "/Dxy" option where "x" and "y" are the first and last drives to back-up to tape. For example, "/Dcj" will back-up drives C: through J: 2. Without disk statistics (/N) You may wish to bypass the Disk Window, especially if you have a large system (such as a network) with a large number of logical drive letters or ridiculously large amounts of storage (if so, I'm jealous!). To turn the drive statistics off, use the /N option followed by the first and last (contiguous) disk drive letters you wish to back-up. For example, if you have drives C: through J: on your system and you want to bypass the Disk Window, use, "WTB /Ncj". - 4 - What Tape Back-up? __________________ C. Using Other Tape Software (/T) You may wish to bypass the tape back-up function of WTB and use it only to display disk statistics and prompt for the tape to use. If you already have a batch file that works well you might choose this route. Use "WTB /T" and WTB will end after the tape selection is made, passing the Tape Set Number to DOS via the ERRORLEVEL. This way you can have a batch file which calls WTB then checks the errorlevel to see which tape set to use (if errorlevel == 2, that means to use set 2, etc.). D. Backing-up Modified Files Only (/M) The default back-up mode for WTB is a full back-up of all drives. Periodically you may wish to only back-up the files which have changed since your last full back-up since this is normally much faster than doing a full back-up. To do this use the /M command. For example, "WTB /dcj /m" will back-up only the files that have changed on drives C: through J: since the last time a full back-up was made. E. Appending to the End of a Tape (/A) Normally WTB will over-write the data on the tape(s) with the new back-up information since locating the end of tape is such a time-consuming process. If you don't have many tapes or your tape drive is faster than mine at finding the end of top, you can append the new information to the end of a tape use the "/A" option. For example, "WTB /M /A" will back-up modified files only and put the information at the end of the tape. F. Command-line Examples To illustrate use of the options, let's say you have disk drives C: through R:, you don't want the system to calculate statistics on all 16 drives, you use 5 sets of back-up tapes (one for each day of the week), and you use something other than CMS or Mountain software. In your batch file do this: WTB 5 /ncr /t if errorlevel 99 goto end if errorlevel 5 goto TapeSet5 if errorlevel 4 goto TapeSet4 ...etc... - 5 - What Tape Back-up? __________________ Note: An errorlevel of 99 indicates that "Cancel" was selected from the WTB menu or that a tape error occurred. Or, let's say you have drives C: through R: but only want to back-up C: through F:, you want hard disk statistics, you use 5 sets of tapes, and you have CMS or Mountain tape software. Just use: WTB 5 /dcf and WTB will perform the complete back-up for you. IX. USING What Tape Back-up? Once you enter the command "WTB" along with any command-line options, several windows will open showing you the operating environment and a menu of options at the top of the screen. You can press the highlighted (first) letter for each option or use a mouse to select the options. A. Go This option begins the back-up as specified. B. Cancel This cancels the back-up and returns you to DOS. C. Verify This toggles the verify flag on and off. When verify is "on" the tape(s) will be verified after the back-up is complete. When "off" only a back-up will be done. Because verifying a tape doubles the back-up time, I found it more convenient (and virtually as safe) to verify my tapes on a rotating basis. If you use four tapes (like I am) and you verify tape #1, then tape #4 will next be scheduled to be verified, then tape #3, then #2, then #1, then back to #4. This way all tapes are verified on a regular basis. I found that by saving time this way I was less tempted to avoid verifying at all (or even, heaven forbid, backing-up at all!). D. Set-up The set-up screen defines how WTB will operate. To set an item, move the cursor (using the keyboard arrow keys) to the item you want to change then press F3. - 6 - What Tape Back-up? __________________ When you press F3 on the Tape Software field you will be presented with a menu of choices. These choices are the software packages which are in the WTB.CMD file. WTB.CMD is an ASCII file which you can look at and edit yourself using any ASCII text editor. I have put commands in there for Mountain 5.x and Jumbo 2.5 & 2.54 software - if you have someting else, just look inside the file for instructions on how to add your tape's commands. The second field is the type of tape you use. WTB really doesn't need to know this except for predicting how many tapes you will need for the back-up. This prediction is not accurate if you use compression (such as with the Jumbo software) which can double amount of information crunched onto a tape. In any case, just press F3 to get a list of tape types and select the type you will be using. The next item is the number of tape sets you will be using. You use a tape drive in case of some far-off unforeseen disaster that may never happen, and the most expensive piece was the tape drive. Splurge and get at least three sets of tapes - you might be really glad you did someday. I have seven sets and I actually have gone back a couple of back-ups to retrieve a file that somehow got erased from my hard disk. You may be just as grateful for multiple tape sets someday! Finally is the field for the back-up method. WTB does not yet use this field. I have not had the encouragement to develop this feature to completion (exactly zero people have contacted me with comments about WTB; maybe I'm just writing to myself?...) Anyhow, the idea of this field is to let you decide HOW you want to rotate your tapes: in a linear fashion (#1, #2, #3, etc. then back to #1, #2, etc.) or using a Father/Son/Grandfather scheme which uses ten tapes to give you a three-month back-up history (four daily tapes for Monday through Thursday, four Friday tapes, and two month-end tapes). E. Selecting Tape Sets In the Tape Window you will see an arrow pointing to the tape set to be used (this is, of course, a recommendation, since you are the one who must put the proper tape(s) in the drive!). WTB recommends the tape set following the last set used (which is normally the oldest set). In other words, it rotates the back-up tapes. If you want to use a different tape set, use the arrow keys to move the pointer between the available tape sets. - 7 - What Tape Back-up? __________________ X. REGISTERING What Tape Back-up? I am not asking for any money for the registration of WTB. This is my way of giving back to all the authors who have donated their labour to the public domain. Letters of appreciation, suggestions, or criticism are always welcome. If you would like to support me look at ORDER.FRM for other software from which I _am_ hoping to derive some financial reward (use "type order.frm > prn" to print it). - 8 -