-=> mark lewis wrote to Sean Dennis <=-

 ml> who keeps a spare machine around to test baremetal restorations?

A business that is serious about its backups.  I've done that at several 
employers before.  We also backed up to different media so if one medium 
failed, we had the same backup on a different medium.

 ml> especially after spending a few hours waiting on the back to run in
 ml> the first place and then to turn around and spend more
 ml> hours waiting on the restoration? i've never seen it
 ml> done... not even in the corporate world... backups were
 ml> done, yes... tested? if you call verification during the
 ml> backup process "tested"...

I got paid to do it so I didn't mind.  Besides, 99% of the time, the 
restoration was fully automated so we didn't have to sit there and watch 
it.  We'd glance at it occasionally, but not just sit there for hours 
and hours.

 SD> I couldn't tell you how many hundreds of man-hours I've lost over
 SD> the years because of not backing up or damaged backups!

 ml> you are not the only one... it is one of the reasons why
 ml> i've resorted to disk duplication of my BBS system but that
 ml> has its own requirements...

This is the CMD (batch) file I use for my nightly backups.  I use a 
different version of it now as this one backs up to a ZIP 250 drive, but 
it's not too hard to do:

{at}echo off
d:
lvm /RediscoverPRM
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m5 -r a pb.rar       d:\pb\*.*
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m5 -r a pbrec.rar    d:\msgs\msg*.* d:\msgs\user*.*
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m5 -r a arc.rar      d:\arc\*.*
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m5 -r a autopost.rar d:\autopost\*.*
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m5 -r a bf.rar       d:\bf\*.*
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m5 -r a irex.rar     d:\irex\*.*
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m5 -r a micronet.rar d:\micronet\*.*
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m5 -r a nef.rar      d:\nef\*.*
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m5 -r a qnode.rar    d:\qnode\*.*
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m5 -r a squish.rar   d:\squish\*.*
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m5 -r a tpolicy.rar  d:\tpolicy\*.*
rar32 -k -rr -rv -av -m0 -r a bbs.rar      pb.rar pbrec.rar arc.rar
autopost.rar bf.rar irex.rar micronet.rar nef.rar qnode.rar squish.rar
tpolicy.rar
verify on
move bbs.rar h:
echo.
echo "Done!"

--

The only things that don't get backed up are files that are in use, but 
I could fix that if needed.  Haven't had to yet.

I now run a similar version that backs up over the network to a 
networked external USB drive.

For imaging the OS/2 drive, I use DFSee.

Later,
Sean

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