Software Review: Backmaster 1.1 (MSR Development)

By Chris Lloyd


 * Written: April 25, 1995

Author note: Since this article was originally written over a year ago, I should mention a few things. First, Backmaster 2.0 has been out for quite some time now, and it introduced several features not present in V1.1, the most important one being support for SCSI drives. Also, after I wrote this article, I read scattered reports of people not being able to use this software with their particular tape drive, even if their drive was supposedly supported "out of the box". My only advice for people is to download the demo first (it should be available on any OS/2 FTP site or BBS). Hopefully, if you have any compatibility issues, you will discover them in the demo before you pay for the full version.

I have never used Backmaster 2.0, so keep in mind this review ALWAYS refers to Backmaster V1.1a.

Backing up any PC's hard disk is never a welcome task. Initially, when hard disks were smaller, it was sufficient to use several floppy disks to back up the entire hard drive. Then, as storage capacity increased, it became more and more cumbersome to swap countless floppies for the sole purpose of protecting data.

Fortunately, tape backup units, previously restricted to businesses with deep pockets, fell in price and became affordable to everyone who owned a PC. With these tape backup units came all kinds of backup software, initially limited to DOS users. Shortly within the release of OS/2 2.1, a few products came out for OS/2 as well, including a product by MSR Development called BackMaster.

Now at version 1.1a, BackMaster allows you to back up any OS/2 drive, either using the FAT file system or HPFS, and is compatible with OS/2 version 2.1, 2.11, or OS/2 "Warp" - both the "for Windows" (red box), or "fullpack" (blue box) versions. MSR Development warns of limited compatibility with OS/2 2.0, regarding some problems with the directory trees. They recommend these users to limit their use of the the trees, and resort to the full backups instead. Since most installations have probably since upgraded to 2.1 and now Warp, this is a small issue.

Some features of BackMaster are text based disaster recovery (allowing you to restore your entire OS/2 system from a few floppies and your backup tape), backwards compatibility with existing QIC 40/80 tapes created from DOS backup programs, and background operations using OS/2's multitasking capabilities. One very nice feature which BackMaster has had since V1.0 is a "forced read" option, which allows you to backup files which are normally locked when OS/2 is running, such as OS2KRNL and critical DLL files. Also supported are extended attributes; something very important to OS/2. If you need to back up files to restore to a DOS-only configuration, BackMaster gives you the option to not write out these extended attributes to avoid potential problems. However, when backing up and restoring to an OS/2 configuration, you should always save the extended attributes, which again BackMaster does without any problems. BackMaster is also very easy to use; it is completely menu and icon driven using the Presentation Manager.

Many of the popular tape backup units are supported, including the Colorado Jumbo and Trakker series, the Iomega 420 and 700, and the Conner 420 or 850. These drives (and many of the others supported) are of the "floppy tape" variety, where the drives communicate with the computer through the use of the floppy controller. Also, some parallel (printer) port drives are supported, like the Iomega Parallel Port Tape II. Recently added is support for the high performance floppy controllers, such as those which support 2.88 megabyte floppy drives. SCSI tape backup units are currently unsupported.

BackMaster V1.1a came shipped with two manuals (the manual for V1.1 and a supplement for V1.1a), and one 3 1/2" diskette. After reading about the procedures on installation, I went ahead with the install. Since it came on only one diskette, it went very quickly. It was also very simple - all I had to do was specify the source drive and destination drive directory, and click on OK. After the files were copied, it changed my CONFIG.SYS for me, and told me I had to reboot to make the device driver active.

After shutting down and rebooting, I double-clicked on the BackMaster main program icon. Since it was the first time I was using the program, the configuration screen automatically came up, asking me for information like the model of my tape backup unit, and if I had a separate controller for the drive. Once I filled in all the necessary information, the main menu was displayed.

Going from left to right on the menu bar, were options for Backup, Restore, Verify, Utilities, Options, and Help. Since I had used BackMaster version 1.0 before, I went to the utilities first to see what was new. I was delighted to see a new option, which was "Read tape volume directory". Under version 1.0, the only way to see the volume list of a tape was to go through the motions of initiating a restore, which was time-consuming. Now, you can simply click on this option, and a list of the volume names will be displayed, assuming you have a valid tape in the drive. The rest of the options under the utilities are still there from V1.0. The first is "Format tape" - which is an option you must use for new tapes not previously formatted by the manufacturer. Like any other tape backup software, this procedure can be very time-consuming. On my Colorado Jumbo 250, this can be around two hours. The second option, "Quick erase tape", simply erases the volume list from a tape, allowing it to be used as if it had been freshly formatted. Of course, the tape must be already formatted to use this option. "Retension tape" is used to wind up the "slack" which may occur after a few uses of the tape, and "Read tape info" gives some high level information on the tape itself, like when it was last formatted, and the tape name.

One thing I noticed when using the utilities is the response time of the tape drive is now much improved. Previously, with version 1.0, the tape drive seemed to initialize (wind a little forward and backward for about 30 seconds) EVERY time I wanted to perform another function. MSR Development has obviously put some thought into this, as the tape will only initialize at certain intervals, usually AFTER an operation, not before, which means much less waiting without sacrificing reliability.

The "Options" menu has a progress window (used when performing a backup or restore), the configuration menu which appeared when I first ran the program, and a message log, which is useful when you want to question specific events during a backup or restore.

The meat of the program is by no doubt the Backup and Restore options. First, I pulled down the Backup option, and was pleased to see many changes since version 1.0. Instead of bringing you to a drive tree to make your file selections, BackMaster now gives you several different flavors of backup. First on the list is "Full" - which means every file on a specific drive is backed up, and the archive bit is cleared on every file. A variation of this is the next option, "Full Copy", where the only difference is that the archive bits are not cleared. "Incremental" backup is the next option, which backs up those files which have the archive bit set, useful when you have recently done a full backup and want to backup only those files which have changed. "Incremental Copy" is identical to the previous option, again the only difference is the copy option does not clear the archive bits on all files. The "Selective" option was the one I was most familiar with; it presented the same menus as the older version, allowing me to choose which files I specifically wanted backed up. "Selective Copy" is just like the other "copy" options - it does not clear the archive bits.

I found the backup operations to go at a reasonable speed and without any problems. Once you start a backup, it is "hands free" until the operation is completed. Of course, you can interrupt the backup at any time. Another welcome change to V1.1 is the automatic verify - something I constantly wished for in version 1.0. This now makes for totally unattended backup until both the backup and verify is completed. The verify went at a good pace too, again, the improved drive initialization logic helps keep things moving along.

Some additional options under Backup are the loading and saving of file selections. File selections are new to version 1.1. It allows you to provide BackMaster a list of commonly archived files through a formatted text file. This is useful when you always back up certain mission-critical directories every time, rather than backing up the entire drive. This is better than the alternative, which is manually selecting the files every time in the selective backup or selective copy options.

The options under "Restore" are much simpler; the only options are "Full" - to restore an entire volume, and "Select" - to select the files in a specific volume to restore. Again, the restore seemed to progress at a respectable pace, considering the capabilities of a floppy tape device.

Overall, I find BackMaster to be an excellent product - one which any OS/2 user who has a compatible tape backup unit should take a serious look at. The initial release of BackMaster was good and had the basic features. Version 1.1a now gives it polish. I haven't tried any other similar products out there for OS/2, but I would find it very difficult to top BackMaster.

I recommend it very highly (however, please read the disclaimer in the author's note at the top of this article).

Chris Lloyd

Cincinnati Team OS/2 User's Group and CPCUG OS/2 SIG