Computer question (b/u to CDs)

[Ringo]

A couple of questions for our geek contingent.

I've got a five machine network with three machines running NT 4.0 and two running WFWG. We're selling it off piecemeal and, since we will no longer have the 8 mm tape drive after we sell that machine, I'd like to preserve our little world on CDs.

Problem #1

NT does not want to do backups to anything but a tape drive, i.e., you cannot easily backup to a CD-R. So, I'm copying our drives to CDs. The problem is that I'm getting buffer underruns (I guess you could as easily call them overruns). I've defragged the HDs, killed the only scheduled (defrag) event and turned off the screen saver. I'm using a Sony 4X CD-R drive with Sony Hotburn software. While the software offers no opportunity to tweek buffering, it does allow you to set the write speed and knocking it down to 1X seems to help, but does not conquer the problem. Ideas?

Problem #2

Some of our projects contain single files that are in excess of the 650 MB that a CD can handle. Backing these up (or writing them) to one or more 8 mm tape(s) is no problem, but simply copying doesn't work. I've thought of a kludgy workaround, but I'd like to get the whole thing on CDs in a form that will survive even if I don't (i.e., useable even if I'm not around to explain how I fragmented the files - BTW, these big-ass files are seismic data volumes). These seismic data files are already ASCII and don't compress very much with LHA, PKZIP or Winzip. More ideas?

[galt]

Problem 1 might be solved by finding a newer, faster machine (possibly with a newer OS which might have better support for the CD-R and/or SCSI controller, you're using) to use the CD burner on temporarily. I've had very good luck with Windows 2000 + Adaptec's EZ CD Creator 4.0.

Problem 2 would be solved by using backup software like Norton Ghost. This will make an image of your hard drive and save it to a file. This includes the boot sector and everything, so you can restore the machine completely after a hardware failure. It has the option to break the images into segments of whatever size you want, and I've done exactly what you're doing for a machine that had about 2G of data (broke it onto 4 CD's). Ghost also comes with software you can use under windows to "explore" the backup files, so you can pull individual archived files out of the images if you wish.

One caveat about Ghost: it's DOS software. It works to backup NT machines (that's all I've used it for, in fact), but it won't work on a running NT system. You need to create a DOS boot disk for your machine. This means that you need a FAT volume to save the drive image on (since DOS doesn't do NTFS). Alternately, instead of having a big FAT volume with lots of space free, you can make a boot disk with network drivers, and mount a network drive to save the image to. This works fine, too, but getting DOS network drivers working is left as an exercise to the reader. I try not to go there too often. :-) (although, if you're using WFWG, maybe you're good at that sort of thing...)

Good luck.

[Ranma]

Use a compression utility that lets you fragment the compressed data in smaller pieces. Ex.: WinRAR.

[Ringo]

I've installed Adaptec's EZ CD Creator and it does not seem to experience any buffer problems (it writes a temp file to your HD), so Problem #1 is solved. And I've just downloaded WinRAR and it looks promising.

Thanks y'all.

[astro]

"These seismic data files are already ASCII and don't compress very much with LHA, PKZIP or Winzip. More ideas?"


Try tweaking winzip for maximum compression options. A raw ASCII data file should compress like crazy.

[dylan_73]

Originally posted by galt
Alternately, instead of having a big FAT volume with lots of space free, you can make a boot disk with network drivers, and mount a network drive to save the image to. This works fine, too, but getting DOS network drivers working is left as an exercise to the reader. I try not to go there too often. :-) (although, if you're using WFWG, maybe you're good at that sort of thing...)


WFWG actually loads the drivers in DOS (IIRC) so you can just copy them to bootdisk, change the appropriate paths, and it should work.

Probably an easier way is to go to http://www.bootdisk.com and grab one of their premade bootdisks, adjusting for your particular network. Again, you can grab the specific driver you need for your card from the WFWG machine.