POINT & SHOOT BACKUP/RESTORE REVISION HISTORY Version 1.0 - June 1988 ----------------------- Original version of the program released Version 2.0 - May 1990 ---------------------- Revised program SETUP to match drive specification of version 2.0 of the Point & Shoot Hard Disk Manager. Program now allows use of external floppy disk drives with letters higher than B and can be executed from any drive or directory. Improved disk formatting routines Increased directory tree capacity to 255 entries Added file compression option (approx. 50% average compression ratio) Enhanced backup speed with direct format/write loop. Backup approaches 1 megabyte per minute on 1.2MB or 1.44MB disks. Added file selection list on restoration for easy single file restorations. Added ability to make subdirectories during restoration if files are restored to other than the original path to allow user to have complete control over the structure of the hard disk to which files are restored. Enhanced error detection/recovery Added single file compression/decompression routines to assist in reconstruction of files outside of the restore process. Added parameter option to immediately move into and execute any one of the 10 backup configurations: PASBR 1..10 Revised and enhanced program documentation Version 2.0A - September 1990 ----------------------------- Added an error number message for backup errors that do not have descriptions. This error number is useful when calling for support if an unknown error occurs during the backup process. Version 2.0B - September 1990 ----------------------------- Made a minor change to backup routines to correct a bug with some computers and 3.5" drives being unable to write system area to disk. Added /C command line parameter to force temporary files to be written to current directory. Version 2.0C - October 1990 --------------------------- Fixed a bug in the backup routines that caused unreliable backups to be made under certain circumstances. Problem did not show up until restoration was attempted. Version 2.0D - January 1991 --------------------------- Fixed a bug in use of external drives for backup. Previously gave an invalid drive request error for drives higher than D. Version 2.1A - February 1991 ---------------------------- Several bugs were fixed in version 2.1A. A variety of errors were reported by users when backing up or restoring disks. Among these errors were bad clusters appearing on the hard disk after backup and "file not found" errors during restoration. These problems have been corrected. VALIDATE command was added to allow the user to check a set of backup disks to determine if they would restore correctly. If any problems were found, they are corrected. USERS OF VERSION 2.0 should run VALIDATE on all sets of backups disks made with version 2.0. Version 2.2A - April 1992 ------------------------- Added new file compression routines which speed up backup with compression by 30%. Backup time estimates have been adjusted to more accurately reflect averages for common file type distributions. Removed VALIDATE command. Added TEST command to RESTORE menu which goes through a restoration without actually restoring files to the hard disk to verify that the backup disk set is in good working order. Note that each file from the backup set is restored to the Point & Shoot Backup/Restore directory with the name PASBRTST.$$1 and then deleted. Backup is not allowed to run from floppy disks. Previous versions should not have been run from floppies because of conflicts in the backup program when low-level disk parameters are modified during backups but the program did not restrict operation to hard disks. Restoration may still be operated from floppy disk. Removed /C command line parameter for special compatibility mode. Some users get errors trying to backup. The /C parameter made a small change to the program to attempt to fix "Bad Disk" errors. This command line option has now been moved to the Backup Configuration screen and is called "USE COMPATIBLE FIXUP?" "INCLUDE TRAILS?" on Backup Configuration screen now just reads "TRAILS?" Added warning to not use prior backup disks if MODIFIED FILES ONLY option is selected. MODIFIED FILES ONLY is used to add new disks to a prior backup set. These new disks will only contain files modified since the last backup. You must keep the original full backup set and any backup sets created with MODIFIED FILES ONLY to be able to restore everything at a later date. Included new installation program which eases installation and updates backup and restore configurations from older versions.