What Tape Back-up? __________________ What Tape Back-up? A Tape Back-up Tracking System Copyright (c) 1991, 1992, Angel Babudro All rights reserved. I. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 II. COPYRIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 III. LICENSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 IV. TECHNICAL SUPPORT (HOW TO REACH ME) . . . . . . . . . . . 1 V. GENERAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 VI. FILE LIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 VII. WHY USE WTB? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 VIII. What Tape Back-up? COMMAND LINE OPTIONS . . . . . . . . . 3 A. Specifying the Number of Tape Sets . . . . . . . . . . 3 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) . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 D. Backing-up Modified Files Only (/M) . . . . . . . . . 4 E. Appending to the End of a Tape (/A) . . . . . . . . . 4 F. Command-line Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 IX. USING What Tape Back-up? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 A. Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 B. Cancel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 C. Verify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 D. Set-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 E. Selecting Tape Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 X. REGISTERING What Tape Back-up? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 - 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 groups are graciously accepted (and thank goodness for that!). I can be reached via mail or BBS. The BBSs below have current versions of my software and I will get messages left there for me. Unless you are in dire straits, please do not call me with questions about WTB; if you must, then please be kind enough to send a donation my way. Thank you for your understanding. - 1 - What Tape Back-up? __________________ Mail Angel Babudro, "Organic Computer Wizardry", 28 Mulberry Street, Clinton, NY USA 13323-1506 BBS Angelo Babudro West Coast Researcher's BBS, So Cal (805) 949-8151 USR HST DS East Coast Nite-Air BBS, Central NY (315) 339-8831 USR HST 14.4 Odie's PCBoard, Central NY (315) 339-6713 USR HST DS V. GENERAL What Tape Back-up? (WTB) is a programme to help you manage sets of back-up tapes. 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. To use WTB you will need: * PC with MS/PC-DOS 3.3 or higher * 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 -- the WordPerfect document file * WTB.TXT -- the ASCII document 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 - 2 - What Tape Back-up? __________________ 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 the user to track 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 a routine for regular back- ups is critical to completing them on a regular basis. I know that in my own case I rarely did back-ups when it was up to me to figure out which tape to use, what type of back-up was last made, and what type of back-up I needed next. What Tape Back-up? takes care of helping you to schedule a back-up routine and stick to it by making things as easy as possible. I hope you will use it to provide yourself with better security for your computer information. 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 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. - 3 - What Tape Back-up? __________________ 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". C. Using Other Tape Software (/T) You may wish to bypass the tape back-up function of WTB, especially if you don't use CMS or Mountain tape software. To do this, use the "/T" switch like so: "WTB /T". This will cause WTB to end after the tape selection is made and pass the Tape Set Number to DOS via ERRORLEVEL. This way you can have a batch file which calls WTB then checks the errorlevel to see which tape to use. 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. If you would like to append the new information to the end of a tape use the "/A" option on the command line. For example, "WTB /M /A" will back-up - 4 - What Tape 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... 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. - 5 - What Tape Back-up? __________________ 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 lets you select the type of software you will be using (as defined in the file WTB.CMD), the type of tapes you use and their capacity, the number of sets of tapes you regularly use, and your preferred back-up scheme. Each option has a menu of choices except for the number of tapes -- just enter the number here. The back-up scheme (daily, weekly, monthly) has not yet been implemented, so for now it's up to you to specify how to do each back-up. 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. X. REGISTERING What Tape Back-up? I am not asking for any money for the registration of WTB. If you like it, however, check out the ORDER.FRM file (use "type order.frm > prn" to print it) for other offers. If you would like your name at the top of the screen just order my Sampler Disk and ask for a copy of WTB with your name on it. - 6 -