Re: corrosion

Stefano Antoniutti (anto@unive.it)
Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:45:28 +0100

>Has anyone devised a relatively painless way of backing up a hard disk
>attached
>to an ASPECT3000? (A sort of ZIP-ASPECT?) My problem child is a 160MB
>Hitachi on an MSL300 and is NMRLINKed to a PC but still has the 8" floppy
>drive. Such neo-archaisms make it clear how things have advanced in the past
>few
>years, but still, I am looking at a terrifyingly large amount of un-backed-up
>programs and data formatted by ADAKOS. Needless to say I have been putting
>this problem on the back burner for too long but want to do something before
>it bites me.
>
>There are several routes I could try with NMRLINK but all seem painfully slow
>and piecemeal and could take 100+ high density floppies!
>
>I would appreciate any suggestions and especially experiences in surmounting
>this problem.
>
>I will compile any information I get and forward it to all requestors.
>
>Charlie Dickinson

Dear dr. Dickinson,

we have the same problem here (an ASPECT 3000 NMRLINKed to a Mac Quadra
650) and we managed it simply by :

1- transferring the data as soon as they are acquired by the (crowd) of
users we have in the Dept.
2- making a clever use of names for data files.

This as a minimum simplifies the work at the moment of backing up, so you
have only (!) to check if you have saved on the pc all you wanted to save
(not really fast, I know, but whith a bit of work every day...), then you
can use the wild-character capabilities of ADAKOS to clean up the disk
selectively, and after than rebuilt it with the ADAKOS "PACK" command.
An Ethernet connection of the Quadra with the Dept. LAN and a good
distributed NMR software (Winnmr, Swan-mr or anything you like) makes the
rest, rendering the data available to all the users in the building.

On the hardware side, I suggest you to connect the ZIP (or JAZZ or anything
you have for the backup) to the PC (not to the ASPECT !) or to connect to
the PC a huge common-access hard disk (Mac OS makes it VERY easy and
secure). The prices are now very low (about two hundred dollars/100 Mb in
Italy).

Anyway, even if you have to backup the whole ASPECT HD, I think that a
night (or a week-end) should be enough !

Good luck !

Stefano Antoniutti

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