The Datafile PD-CD 5/DATAFILE_PDCD5.iso/utilities/h/hardback/!Backup/Docs/Backup

Text File | 1996-10-26 | 17.0 KB | 422 lines

HardBack in use
===============

This section gives an in-depth guide to the features present in
Backup and Restore.

Backup
======

Basic overview
--------------

When you first load HardBack, an icon is displayed on the iconbar.
Clicking on this icon will bring up the options window allowing
you to set various options about the backup, and save and load
script files.  Once these have been set, a click on Start starts the
backup operation proper.  This opens the status window which tells
you how the backup is progressing.  At certain times dialogue
boxes may appear either asking to make choices, or to do
something (such as insert a new disc) and click Continue.  Once
the backup has finish, a short message will be displayed at the
bottom of the status window.  When this has happened, you can
start another backup operation by closing the status window and
clicking on the iconbar icon, which will display the options
window once again.

Starting up
-----------

To start up Backup, double click on the !Backup icon in a directory
display.  A large window will appear which urges you to register
with the author (see Appendix A for details).  After you have read
the text in this window, click on Continue to load Backup.  After a
short pause the icon will appear on the iconbar with the word
‘Ready’ underneath it.  This signals that Backup is waiting for you
to tell it to do something.  If you click Menu over the iconbar icon,
a short menu will appear.


Info
----
This opens a window giving information about the Backup
program.

It also displays the version and serial numbers, which should be
quoted in all correspondence with the author.  The ‘This program is
Shareware’ icon is actually a button, which, when clicked on,
opens a text file giving details on how to register.  It is essentially
the same as Appendix A in this manual.

Quit
----
This exits the Backup program and removes it from memory.  You
will be asked if you really want to quit if there is a backup in
progress.

If you click on the iconbar icon the Options window will appear.

Options window
==============

This window permits you to change a large number of factors
which affect what the backup does and how it works.

1  Load target
Drag a script file here to load it into HardBack.  If Shift is held
down, then any files in the Selected and Ignored windows will be
cleared before the script file is loaded, otherwise the items
currently there will remain and the selected/ignored parts of the
two files will merge.

2 Scrolling section (pane)
This section contains the options themselves and can be scrolled by
using 3.  It is officially called a pane.

3 Scroll bar
Use this to scroll the scrolling section, as you would any other Risc
OS window.

4 Reset
This button resets the options to what they were when they were
last stored - when Start or Update was clicked, or when a script file
was loaded or saved.  Note that Selected and Ignored files, plus the
contents of the ‘Only file of type:’ list are stored each time a new
entry is added, removed, selected or deselected, and so these values
will not change.

5 Update
This updates the copy of the options stored within the program to
that shown in the options window.

6 Cancel
This is the same as reset, but it also closes the options window.

7 Start
This is the same as update, but it also starts the backup operation
described by the options.

Scrolling options
-----------------
This is the main part of the options window, which contains the
icons which allow you to set the criteria by which the backup is
carried out.  It is divided into several parts:

Source/Destination

1  Source box
Dragging a file or directory here will fill in the source icon with its
name.  Dragging with Ctrl held down will enter the name of its
parent into the source icon.

2 Source icon
This icon allows you to type in and edit directly the name of the
source directory or file - i.e. the name of the directory or file to
copy files from onto floppy disc.

3 Destination icon
This icon allows you to enter and edit the name of the destination
drive and directory - i.e the drive and directory to back up the
source onto.  Currently, this must include a drive specifier (e.g :0)
rather than a disc specifier (e.g :FredsDisc).  However it can
contain any number of directories - if these are not present on the
disc they will be created.  It must mention a filing system, which
must be controlled by FileCore.  This includes most major filing
systems such as SCSI, ADFS, IDE, RAMFS, but not networks,
ArcFS or DeviceFS.

For example: scsi::5.$.Backups.WorkAug95


4 Destination menu icon
This icon opens a pop-up menu containing a selection of possible
destinations.  It auto-senses how many ADFS floppies and SCSI
drives are connected and puts only valid items onto the menu.

Options
-------
This region permits you to set some of the major, but non-
compulsory options.

1 Selected files
This allows you to choose particular files and directories to
backup.  They needn’t be in the same directory or even on the same
drive or filing system.  When this is selected, incremental backups
are disabled and so 4, 5, 6, and 9 are disabled.  Click on Select...
to display a window into which you can drag particular files.
When selected files is used, the source name is not necessary.
However, it is still stored in the backup file as the ‘parent’ of all the
files, as if they all came from the same directory, and it is used as
the default directory when you are restoring the whole backup.  If
no name is present, Backup.Selections will be used instead.

2 Ignored files
This allows you to opt to ignore certain files and directories that
you don’t want to be backed up.  The files to ignore can be
anywhere within the directory structure as long as a parent is
specified to be backed up; if it is not specified then clearly nothing
will happen.  If a file or directory is present in both the Selected
and Ignored windows then it will be ignored.

3 Select.../Ignore...
Clicking either of these buttons brings up a window to which you
can drag files and directories to respectively choose to backup or
not to backup.

You can select particular items in the same way you would do in a
Filer window, and clicking Menu over the window brings up a
menu giving you options to remove files or directories from the
window.

4 Incremental
This option allows you to backup files that have changed since a
certain date.  It does not apply to directories; all directories are
scanned, but their contents will not be backed up if it is older than
the date specified.  Files which are untyped - i.e have load/
execution addresses rather than a filetype and date stamp will
always be backed up.

5 Last backup
This option, when Incremental is switched on, will read the date of
the last backup from the BackupDate file stored in the source
directory, and back up all file created after the date held within it.
If a BackupDate file is not present in the source then an error will
be given when you try to start the backup.  You can check the date
held in a BackupDate file by loading it into a text editor such as
Zap or Edit.  It is stored in a human-readable form at the end of the
file.

6 On/at
This allows you to specify a date and, if necessary, a time, directly
by typing it into the icons. The date should go in the top icon in the
form day/month/year, and the time in the bottom as either
hours:minutes or hours:minutes:seconds.  The year can either be as
four digits (1998) or as two (98).  If it is as two, then it is assumed
to be in the 20th century.  Alternatively, dragging a file or directory
will set the date and time to when it was last saved.

7 Only files of type ...
This option allows you to choose to only backup files of specified
filetypes, including Impression documents stored as applications.
The list which contains those filetypes you do want to backup can
be added to by clicking on the pop-up menu icon to the right (Ç)

8 Only files... pop-up menu
Clicking on this icon opens the menu which contains a list of those
filetypes you want to backup.  At the top of the menu is a list of the
filetypes that have been entered already.  You can click on any of
these and it will toggle whether that type is to be backed up or not.
If a filetype is to be backed up, its entry will be ticked.  At the
bottom of the menu is a writeable icon, into which you can enter
filetypes.  This can either be in the name of the type, such as
‘DrawFile’, or its hexadecimal type, such as ‘3FB’.  The entry will
then be put on the menu and automatically ticked.  The Impression
option recognises an Impression file as being a directory with a file
called !DocData inside it.  If you have any directories with
!DocData files inside them which are not Impression files, then
they will be backed up.  Also if you have any Impression files
without !DocData, then they will not be backed up.

9 Write BackupDate file
The BackupDate file is used to store the date of the last backup -
see à Incremental for more details.  If this option is off, a
BackupDate file will not be created in the source directory.  This is
useful if you do not intend to do an incremental backup on a
particular source, or because the source is read only, such as a
network.

10 Image filing systems...
Under Risc OS 3 only, image files are partitions of a disc which are
actually a file, but when double-clicked open like a directory - for
example, PC partitions and ArcFS 2 archives.  This section
provides three possible ways of backing them up:

1 file: This treats the image file as a file, and backs it up in the
exact form it is on the disc.  This means you can restore an
identical copy from either the Entire backup or Selected items part
of Restore, but you will not be able to access the files inside it
under Selected items.

Directory: This treats it as a directory, and so opens it and backs
up each of the files inside individually.  In Restore, you can only
access the contents under Selected items - you cannot restore the
whole thing in Entire backup, or drag out the image file itself from
Selected files because HardBack has no way of knowing how the
original image file was structured.  Restore entire backup will
simply ignore image files stored in this way.

Ignore: This ignores all image files completely.

Please note that an image file is only recognised as an image file if
the relevant software is loaded - for instance,  until ArcFS 2 is
loaded all ArcFS archives will be treated as normal files.

HardBack can cope with files which have names up to 255
characters long.  However, in Restore under Selected items, the
directory display may be slightly messed up if they have more than
12.  This should have no effect on restoring them.

Optimisation
------------
This section allows you to speed up HardBack to the greatest
possible extent and produce smaller backup files.  Due to
compression being missing from this demo version, only one
option is available.

1 Buffer size
This allows you to expressly set the size of file buffers used when
reading data from files and copying it into the backup file.
Basically, the higher this value, the faster the backup proceeds.
Another way to increase the size of the file buffers is to open the
Task Manager’s Task Display, and drag the red bar next to
HardBack (Backup) to the right, thus increasing the memory
allocation.  For more details see the section Memory Management
in section 3.

Errors
This is a rather small section, containing just one item.

1 Ignore file errors
If this is set HardBack will not warn you about errors concerning
individual files in the source such as ‘Access violation’,
‘Disc error...’ etc.  It will display the error in the messages icon in
the option window, but will not open a window and ask you to
click on Continue.  This option is useful if you want to do an
unattended backup - obviously you don’t want it stopping half way
through and waiting for you to click on OK.

Status window
-------------
Once you have clicked on Start in the Options window, it closes
and is replaced by the status window.  This window gives you
information about the backup operation, how it is progressing, and
any problems that occur.  Clicking Menu over this window
produces a menu with one item, Stop, which acts the same as
clicking on the Stop button (11).  Once the backup operation has
finished, closing this window and then clicking on the iconbar icon
will take you back to the options window, with the options chosen
for the backup still there.


1,2 Source, Destination paths
These are simply reminders of where the backup is coming from
and going to.  They are exactly the same as those specified in the
options window.

3 Backup type
This is a basic reminder of the settings in the options window.
Each letter or pair of letters stands for a setting which is switched
on:
S    Selected items
I    Ignored items
i    Incremental:
    l    Last backup
    o    On/at specified date/time
O    Only files of type...
B    Write BackupDate
M    Treat image files as:
    f    One file
    d    Directory
    i    Ignore completely
b    Buffer size set

Image files will always be set to something, so this will never be
empty.

4 Complete
This indicates approximately how much of the backup operation
has been completed as a percentage.  It is calculated from the file
sizes of those files done and those files to go, and so may be
slightly out as regards the time taken to finish; for example, if the
backup consisted of one 100k file and 200 empty files, then as
soon as the 100k file had been backed up, Complete would show
100% while the backup would continue for some time doing all the
empty files.

5 Doing disc ...
This displays the number of the current destination disc.

6 ... of ~ ...
This displays the estimated total number of discs.  This is worked
out in a similar way to Complete, and so may not be exact.  Also, it
cannot anticipate what capacity discs you will be using, and as a
result may be slightly inaccurate.  It is calculated using the mix of
disc capacities you have used so far, and so assumes that you will
be using the same mix until the end of the backup.

7 Average compression
In the full version, this displays the average size of files after
compression as a percentage of their original size, but in this demo
compression is not available, and so it is always 100%.

8 Time to finish
This displays a rough guess at the time that it will take to finish the
backup.  As with Complete and Doing disc ..., this is an
approximate figure, and so may not be exact, or count down
precisely in seconds.  For the first few files, you should ignore this
value as it will often be ludicrously high - this is simply due to
inaccuracies in timing, which are evened out after the first few
files.

9 Currently doing
This shows the file or directory that is currently being backed up.

10 Messages bar
This bar shows any other messages which are reported from the
backup.  In the screenshot above it is displaying the compression
ratio for a particular file (this is irrelevant in this version, which
does not have compression).  It can also be used to report errors
and tells you which files are too old to be backed up in an
incremental backup.

11 Stop button
This button stops the backup completely.  Generally if the backup
is stopped in this way then it will still be readable in the Entire
backup part of Restore, but obviously only up until the point it was
stopped.

12 Pause button
This button pauses the backup.  All disc activity stops, although
files are still left open.  The word ‘Pause’ changes to ‘Continue’,
and so to carry on with the backup you must click on this icon
again.

Request window
--------------
This window gives you simple prompts such as ‘Insert blank disc X
into drive Y’ or ‘Please wait, formatting disc.’.  While it is on the
screen the backup is paused.  If you click Menu over it, a menu is
produced which acts identically to the menu produced when Menu
is clicked over the status window.

Query window
------------
This window asks you questions which mostly involve handling of
discs.  A menu identical to that mentioned above is produced when
you click Menu over it.

There are a number of messages that can be given that need
explaining:

Disc is not blank - Erase contents?
This means there is some space free on the disc.  If you click OK
the disc will be wiped, while if you click Cancel, the files will be
left as they are and the backup files added to them. This will
obviously means that you can get less data on a disc which is not
blank.

Disc is full - erase contents?
This is different from the above error, because it means the disc is
absolutely full, and there is not even room to create the backup file.
Clicking OK will wipe the disc, while Cancel will prompt you to
insert another disc.

Error: xxxxx. Do you want to continue using this disc?
This is used to report errors such as ‘Disc is write-protected’.
Click OK to try again or Cancel to use another disc.

Error: xxxxx. Format disc?
This is used to report errors such as ‘Disc not understood - has it
been formatted’.  Click OK to format the disc or Cancel to use
another.