Re: [NTLK] NCU vs. Card Backups

From: Dan (dan_at_dbdigitalweb.com)
Date: Sun Nov 07 2004 - 10:27:29 PST


>>I recently read a post claiming that NCU is notorious for unreliable
>>backups. This was the first I've heard about that, but it has me
>>concerned. That comment was followed by a suggestion to make backups
>>to
>>linear cards.
>
>
> In my experience, and from what I've seen on the list, the incremental
> backups are the absolute worst, as in very unlikely to work properly-
> ever.

I quite agree. However I have had incremental backups work a few times.
  But after hearing all the horror stories, I decided to just do full
backups.
>
> Clean backups, where everything gets done from scratch, seem to be OK.
> And I've not had one be bad yet.
>
> You can force a clean backup every time by renaming the backup files
> and putting them in a new directory (at least on a 9.x Mac). Do this
> for both the main MP backup, and for that of your cards, and it all
> should be there when you need it.

Yes I have never had a problem with a clean full backup if it ends the
backup process and the Newt and desktop are still connected. If the
connection is broken, then you can't be 100% sure. Although NCU only
saves the backup files to the backups folder when it is fully completed,
until that point it just saves it to a temp file. But I never trust it
if the desktop and Newt stopped talking before the backup was done.

As for clean backups, it works the same way for the PC version of NCU as
well. What I do is have each backup in a separate folder under the NCU
folder and I keep several backups. This way if for some reason one is
corrupted, I can just use a slightly older one rather than loosing
everything (has not happened yet, but more backups can't hurt).

-Dan

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