backup program for xenix?

[Ronald S H Khoo]

bill at bilver.uucp (Bill Vermillion) writes:

> As to floppy errors, use good quality floppies, and backup often.
> You could also re-read the floppies to make sure they were okay.

But don't re-read them using tar tv2 because that *seeks* and thus
does not re-read all the data.  Do tar tvf - < /dev/install (or whatever)
instead.

And yes, *definitely* re-read the floppies on a completely different
machine.  I know someone who ended up with a whole binbag full of
worthless floppies because his controller card went phut for *months*
but was still able to read floppies that it had written itself.  Then
one day it totally went, and nothing else in the world could read those
floppies.  So be warned.

Tape drives have a similar, but worse problem.  It can be hard to tell
that your drive is misaligned till it dies, and you can't read your
backups on the replacement drive.

Moral of the story:  You always need at least two removeable media devices.
Ever wondered what use that old 286 box was ?  Now you know -- use it
to verify your floppy backups !
-- 
Ronald Khoo <ronald at robobar.co.uk> +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)