🚀 go-pugleaf

About a week ago, I mentioned that I was going to give SYTOS premium a
try since Indelible Blue had it on sale.  Well, I did.

At first, I thought I was going to have the same disappointment I had
with gtak or backupwiz since my SCSI card (Adaptec 1742) and Tape
(Tandberg 4220) working with OS/2 debug kernel 2.0+SP1 including debug
HPFS would not agree with the backup programs.  Although I had an
instance of systos reporting that the tape wasn't respomnding to its
commands (tape was written with the gtak gnutar/tape program) after
erasing the tape, everything went on smoothly.  I was able to do a full
backup in 1 hour and 15 minutes (ST11200 1GB pretty loaded).  Since I
had QFA (quick file access feature of TDC 4220) enabled, the compression
was off.  You can have the compression on, but then there is no QFA
access on file level.

The backup went pretty speedy, although the tape would start and stop at
times.  The SCSI bus seems to be the bottleneck (The bus access light
was on most of the time - I have the Adaptec SCSI bus in use output
connected to the HD light on the server case instead of the harddisk
access indicator).  I was reading and writing news/mail during the
backup procedure.  I use uupc for OS/2, trn for OS/2, and elm for OS/2.

After the backup, Systos Premium went on to verify the files it stored,
and it was successull at that.  It did notify me that not all files were
processed, this is expected when it runs into busy files. (waiting is
off by default since 2.0 does not release them ever (system ini file
etc))

My attempt to create a disaster recovery version using sytos rebound
failed with a trap.  I understand the difficulties involved with the
version I have, so I skipped that part.  I don't think I will ever try
to restore a running OS/2 2.0 version as long as I can work with 2.1 or
warp.  I bravely deleted all partitons except bootmanager and formatted
the installation partition from the CDROM installation.

Installing OS/2 2.1 from the CDROM and applying the servicepack from the
Hobbes ready to run CDROM went on smoothly too, except at the end of the
service pack when it wanted to have the 2.1 CDROM inserted back in.  I
did not feel good about it and crossed my fingers.  So far, haven't
noted any adverse effects.

Now, the critical part of restoring the data was on my agenda.  Fisrt I
installed Sytos premium on the boot partition for OS/2 2.1  Then I
attempted to restore some of the applications I was using, namely, uupc
and the news machine first.  Retrieval including the shuffling of data
to different parttions and directories went on very well.  Sytos lets
you define a sheet which instructs the software to use the new
location/path for stored data.  Sytos seems to have 3 threads so I don't
suspect any bad PM programming and locked system as well as scheduling
problems.  It also comes with a scheduling program of its own which can
let you schedule other programs as well.  The manual seems to be very
professionally done.  The user interface is quite windowslike, but
managable and self explaining.

I still intend to check out back again 2 as sson as I receive it. 
Systos was in stock, and ba/2 was out of stock when I ordered, and a
week after that too.  Systos Premium seems to have already won my heart
though.

Best Regards,

Mustafa Soysal

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Mustafa Soysal               (313) 741-1844 Voice                      TeamOS/2
MISTIK Systems               (313) 741-1937 Fax          Author of UnTieCom(tm)
PO Box 7064                                           Authorised ZyXEL Reseller
Ann Arbor, MI 48107-7064, USA                          os2-l@mistik.express.net
    finger info -> mistik@conch.aa.msen.com  or  mistik@garnet.msen.com
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