Any hints on recovering 12 yr old MS-DOS backups ? ( slightly off topic )

[Dave Bloodgood]

I have been saving numerous "Backup sets" from the early 1990's and recently
Ive tried
to recover them, with the hopes of making CDROMs and purging my garage of
the old
media ( I had great success with the CP/M stuff a couple of years ago ), and
even some
success with the 150 Mbyte tapes from the mid-1990's.

I have completely struck out with the 5.25" floppy backup sets - both those
made by
central point backup and those made ( perhaps ) by Fastback. Ive used 4
different
floppy drives, 2 different computers, and even tried a "compaticard 3" which
I figured
was a sure thing. Ive tried under dos 5, 6, 6.2, windows 95 and windows 98.

The main issue is that the s/w in many cases doesnt even seem to access the
floppy
drive - it seems to basically skip the restore function entirely, or in
other cases, it seems
to sit there indefinitely, trying to read the 1st sector. I can ( in most
cases ) read the
directory of the floppies, and can copy the data to the local hard drive -
So Im guessing
that the s/w tries to use the h/w in some sort of a special mode, to
increase speed or to
increase capacity of the floppy - unforunately, when it tries those tricks
today, with the
various h/w configs Ive tried, they dont work.

The web doesnt seem to have many resources for this...Does anyone have any
hints or
links to resources or ideas for me to pursue ?

Help

Dave
***@cox.net

[Nico de Jong]

Post by Dave Bloodgood
I have been saving numerous "Backup sets" from the early 1990's and

recently Ive tried

Post by Dave Bloodgood
to recover them, with the hopes of making CDROMs and purging my garage of

the old

Post by Dave Bloodgood
media ( I had great success with the CP/M stuff a couple of years ago ),

and even some

Post by Dave Bloodgood
success with the 150 Mbyte tapes from the mid-1990's.

I've seen before, that (especially) back-up software does funny things, e.g.
talking to the floppy controller directly. This disgusting habit is now
largely impossible, due to the structure of the newer (Windows) operating
systems.

The way I see it, you should either build a DOS-based 486 for especially
that purpose (and not discarding it afterwards...), or used specialized
software like what I'm distributing in Scandinavia. And that will cost you a
minor fortune, I'm afraid.

Nico

[Morten Reistad]

Post by Nico de Jong

Post by Dave Bloodgood
I have been saving numerous "Backup sets" from the early 1990's and

recently Ive tried

Post by Dave Bloodgood
to recover them, with the hopes of making CDROMs and purging my garage of

the old

Post by Dave Bloodgood
media ( I had great success with the CP/M stuff a couple of years ago ),

and even some

Post by Dave Bloodgood
success with the 150 Mbyte tapes from the mid-1990's.

I've seen before, that (especially) back-up software does funny things, e.g.
talking to the floppy controller directly. This disgusting habit is now
largely impossible, due to the structure of the newer (Windows) operating
systems.
The way I see it, you should either build a DOS-based 486 for especially
that purpose (and not discarding it afterwards...), or used specialized
software like what I'm distributing in Scandinavia. And that will cost you a
minor fortune, I'm afraid.

If the software didn't do tricks like extra sectors or tracks you could
start by getting the bits to disk with something like dd; and writing
small programs to access it from there. I don't think the old DOS backup
formats were very complicated things.

Such things may even exist in the linux&BSD worlds for all that I know.

-- mrr

[Hank Oredson]

Post by Dave Bloodgood
I have been saving numerous "Backup sets" from the early 1990's and recently
Ive tried
to recover them, with the hopes of making CDROMs and purging my garage of
the old
media ( I had great success with the CP/M stuff a couple of years ago ), and
even some
success with the 150 Mbyte tapes from the mid-1990's.
I have completely struck out with the 5.25" floppy backup sets - both those
made by
central point backup and those made ( perhaps ) by Fastback. Ive used 4
different
floppy drives, 2 different computers, and even tried a "compaticard 3" which
I figured
was a sure thing. Ive tried under dos 5, 6, 6.2, windows 95 and windows 98.
The main issue is that the s/w in many cases doesnt even seem to access the
floppy
drive - it seems to basically skip the restore function entirely, or in
other cases, it seems
to sit there indefinitely, trying to read the 1st sector. I can ( in most
cases ) read the
directory of the floppies, and can copy the data to the local hard drive -
So Im guessing
that the s/w tries to use the h/w in some sort of a special mode, to
increase speed or to
increase capacity of the floppy - unforunately, when it tries those tricks
today, with the
various h/w configs Ive tried, they dont work.
The web doesnt seem to have many resources for this...Does anyone have any
hints or
links to resources or ideas for me to pursue ?
Help

Went through this exercise a couple years ago.

Had a 386 machine available, and was able to read and restore
pretty much all disks of interest. Are they standard 360K or 1.2 M
disks, or are they some oddball format? Can you access them using
one of the raw disk copy utilities? Sorry, no longer remember names
for them, but Google should turn them up. If you happen to be running
QEMM, that can prevent floppy access in some oddball cases. Have
you tried with the floppy drive as drive A:? Some backup software
did not like drive B: (ick!). Have you tried several floppy drives?
I had a couple that refused to read some of my old disks. How do
the disks look? Recording surface nice and clean? Had a couple that
somehow acquired some "garp" on the recording surface. Cleaning
same by hand (tedious) with head cleaner fixed 'em.

I wish you luck ...

[philo]

Post by Dave Bloodgood
I have been saving numerous "Backup sets" from the early 1990's and recently
Ive tried
to recover them, with the hopes of making CDROMs and purging my garage of
the old
media ( I had great success with the CP/M stuff a couple of years ago ), and
even some
success with the 150 Mbyte tapes from the mid-1990's.
I have completely struck out with the 5.25" floppy backup sets - both those
made by
central point backup and those made ( perhaps ) by Fastback. Ive used 4
different
floppy drives, 2 different computers, and even tried a "compaticard 3" which
I figured
was a sure thing. Ive tried under dos 5, 6, 6.2, windows 95 and windows 98.
The main issue is that the s/w in many cases doesnt even seem to access the
floppy
drive - it seems to basically skip the restore function entirely, or in
other cases, it seems
to sit there indefinitely, trying to read the 1st sector. I can ( in most
cases ) read the
directory of the floppies, and can copy the data to the local hard drive -
So Im guessing
that the s/w tries to use the h/w in some sort of a special mode, to
increase speed or to
increase capacity of the floppy - unforunately, when it tries those tricks
today, with the
various h/w configs Ive tried, they dont work.
The web doesnt seem to have many resources for this...Does anyone have any
hints or
links to resources or ideas for me to pursue ?

you must restore using the *exact* version of backup under which they were
originally made
note: even msdos6.21 and msdos6.22 use *different* backup programs !

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by philo
you must restore using the *exact* version of backup under which they
were originally made
note: even msdos6.21 and msdos6.22 use *different* backup programs !

This is something I learned the hard way many moons ago. (My next
step was to write my own backup and restore procedures, which didn't
use these utilities.) Call me strange, but I would have expected
that you'd want backup formats to be as stable and robust as you
can get - or at least backward compatible. But I guess that's
just one more reason why I wouldn't make a good Microsoftie.

--
/~\ ***@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

[Kevin Handy]

Post by Dave Bloodgood
I have been saving numerous "Backup sets" from the early 1990's and recently
Ive tried
to recover them, with the hopes of making CDROMs and purging my garage of
the old
media ( I had great success with the CP/M stuff a couple of years ago ), and
even some
success with the 150 Mbyte tapes from the mid-1990's.
I have completely struck out with the 5.25" floppy backup sets - both those
made by
central point backup and those made ( perhaps ) by Fastback. Ive used 4
different
floppy drives, 2 different computers, and even tried a "compaticard 3" which
I figured
was a sure thing. Ive tried under dos 5, 6, 6.2, windows 95 and windows 98.
The main issue is that the s/w in many cases doesnt even seem to access the
floppy
drive - it seems to basically skip the restore function entirely, or in
other cases, it seems
to sit there indefinitely, trying to read the 1st sector. I can ( in most
cases ) read the
directory of the floppies, and can copy the data to the local hard drive -
So Im guessing
that the s/w tries to use the h/w in some sort of a special mode, to
increase speed or to
increase capacity of the floppy - unforunately, when it tries those tricks
today, with the
various h/w configs Ive tried, they dont work.
The web doesnt seem to have many resources for this...Does anyone have any
hints or
links to resources or ideas for me to pursue ?

FastBack didn't use the standard format for the floppies. It had it's
own format that allowed more data to be stored on each floppy.
It also didn't put a MSDOS headers on them. I think it may also
have done some compression on the data.

The only way you are likely to get anything off them is to restore
them using the original FastBack software.

[a***@NOW.AT.arargh.com]

On Sun, 05 Oct 2003 15:00:17 -0600, Kevin Handy <***@srv.net> wrote:

<snip>

Post by Kevin Handy
FastBack didn't use the standard format for the floppies. It had it's
own format that allowed more data to be stored on each floppy.
It also didn't put a MSDOS headers on them. I think it may also
have done some compression on the data.
The only way you are likely to get anything off them is to restore
them using the original FastBack software.

Yes, I think that is very likley true. AND, you will very likley need
a system that is old enough that FastBack will still work.
And FastBack also had the somewhat neat trick when using 1.2 meg
drives, and 360k floppys, of writing 7 or 800k per floppy.

[Peter Flass]

Post by a***@NOW.AT.arargh.com
<snip>

Post by Kevin Handy
FastBack didn't use the standard format for the floppies. It had it's
own format that allowed more data to be stored on each floppy.
It also didn't put a MSDOS headers on them. I think it may also
have done some compression on the data.
The only way you are likely to get anything off them is to restore
them using the original FastBack software.

Yes, I think that is very likley true. AND, you will very likley need
a system that is old enough that FastBack will still work.

Be sure to let us know what you tried, whether or not you're ultimately
successful.

[Dave Bloodgood]

Post by Peter Flass
Be sure to let us know what you tried, whether or not you're ultimately
successful.

Well....I was able to find a "demo" version of fastback plus on the
internet,
with it, I was able to restore at least 3 other versions of fastback from
the
backup sets. I was able to use one of those to recover nearly all the
remaining
fastback backed up files that I wanted to. Fastback allows you to copy the
backup files from the floppie to a hard drive. Once they are on the hard
drive,
then fastback will open and process them, as if they were on the floppy.

I have yet to restore byte 1 from files backed up with central point backup
( to
floppies ) - I have pctools version 8, and need to try version 7 ( which I
think
a friend has ). If not, I see it for sale on ebay.

Thanks for all the advice

Dave

[j***@aol.com]

Post by Dave Bloodgood

Post by Peter Flass
Be sure to let us know what you tried, whether or not you're ultimately
successful.

Well....I was able to find a "demo" version of fastback plus on the
internet,
with it, I was able to restore at least 3 other versions of fastback from
the
backup sets. I was able to use one of those to recover nearly all the
remaining
fastback backed up files that I wanted to. Fastback allows you to copy the
backup files from the floppie to a hard drive. Once they are on the hard
drive,
then fastback will open and process them, as if they were on the floppy.
I have yet to restore byte 1 from files backed up with central point backup
( to
floppies ) - I have pctools version 8, and need to try version 7 ( which I
think
a friend has ). If not, I see it for sale on ebay.
Thanks for all the advice

This sounds like it belongs as an entry in comp.risks. People
can't be reminded too much about backwards wayward bits.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

[Chuck Sterling]

Post by Dave Bloodgood
I have yet to restore byte 1 from files backed up with central point backup
( to
floppies ) - I have pctools version 8, and need to try version 7 ( which I
think
a friend has ). If not, I see it for sale on ebay.

Seems like cp backup showed up with Iomega Bernoulli drives during my
previous life. I might be able to locate a copy of that if you need it;
depends on whether we've cleaned out the closets lately...

Chuck Sterling

[CBFalconer]

Kevin Handy wrote:
... snip ...

Post by Kevin Handy
FastBack didn't use the standard format for the floppies. It had
it's own format that allowed more data to be stored on each floppy.
It also didn't put a MSDOS headers on them. I think it may also
have done some compression on the data.
The only way you are likely to get anything off them is to restore
them using the original FastBack software.

Early Fastback had its own disc format. Later versions used DOS
formatted discs, and these are much more tractable. You can get
the images off as files into the root directory of a hard disk,
and extract things from there. Don't try to repair the original
discs, just use something that can repeatedly try a sector until
it reads it. It is a bear.

[a***@NOW.AT.arargh.com]

Post by CBFalconer
... snip ...

Post by Kevin Handy
FastBack didn't use the standard format for the floppies. It had
it's own format that allowed more data to be stored on each floppy.
It also didn't put a MSDOS headers on them. I think it may also
have done some compression on the data.
The only way you are likely to get anything off them is to restore
them using the original FastBack software.

Early Fastback had its own disc format. Later versions used DOS
formatted discs, and these are much more tractable. You can get
the images off as files into the root directory of a hard disk,
and extract things from there. Don't try to repair the original
discs, just use something that can repeatedly try a sector until
it reads it. It is a bear.

Also, try different drives, and different temperatures for the
floppys.

I once recovered some data off of removable disk pack by letting it
sit outside in 0 degree weather for an hour or two, and then popping
it in the drive, and reading it before it had a chance to warm up.
But don't try this extreme case unless you know what you are doing and
what the possible problems are.

[Chuck Sterling]

Post by a***@NOW.AT.arargh.com
<snip>
I once recovered some data off of removable disk pack by letting it
sit outside in 0 degree weather for an hour or two, and then popping
it in the drive, and reading it before it had a chance to warm up.
But don't try this extreme case unless you know what you are doing and
what the possible problems are.

Also works for finicky hard drives. Gotta do the recovery quick, before
the condensation forms...
Chuck Sterling

[a***@NOW.AT.arargh.com]

On Tue, 07 Oct 2003 21:42:14 -0600, Chuck Sterling

Post by Chuck Sterling

Post by a***@NOW.AT.arargh.com
<snip>
I once recovered some data off of removable disk pack by letting it
sit outside in 0 degree weather for an hour or two, and then popping
it in the drive, and reading it before it had a chance to warm up.
But don't try this extreme case unless you know what you are doing and
what the possible problems are.

Also works for finicky hard drives. Gotta do the recovery quick, before
the condensation forms...

Works best in the middle of winter, when the humidity is very low. :-)

[Mikko Nahkola]

Post by a***@NOW.AT.arargh.com

Post by Chuck Sterling

Post by a***@NOW.AT.arargh.com
I once recovered some data off of removable disk pack by letting it
sit outside in 0 degree weather for an hour or two, and then popping
it in the drive, and reading it before it had a chance to warm up.
But don't try this extreme case unless you know what you are doing and
what the possible problems are.

Also works for finicky hard drives. Gotta do the recovery quick, before
the condensation forms...

Works best in the middle of winter, when the humidity is very low. :-)

Reminds me of the case a friend had with a Cyrix processor on Linux ...
there was an overheating problem that would be triggered by software,
and there was a kernel fix in source form ... except that the thing would
always overheat during a kernel build.

It was winter, though. So ... wait for a cold day and do it outside.
Something like -15 C ...