Re: INFORMIX WISH LIST

Here's one that I think is a *major* short-coming of the Online software. None of the archive utilities can perform a verify of data written out to tape. This is a major deficiency in my opinion. Essentially the software assumes that if it sends a request to have data thrown at a tape drive, and the tape drive doesn't return an error, then everything is A-OK. Bzzt! Big mistake. A wise administrator knows that if you don't verify backups, you have no guarantee that your data is sound. And this is exactly what a backup is supposed to be - a guarantee that you can get your data back if something happens to your drives. This is critical stuff and there's no room for foolin' around. This was driven home to me again, today. I just made a backup using Ontape last Friday. Today I tried to use the tape to migrate data to another machine. Unpleasant surprise: archive is bad! On Friday, there was no indication of error from Ontape. Trusting Online utilities (never mind, CRC, if your drive can't copy it) to take care of your data seems as simple minded as using cpio, tar or copy, to backup your files, none of which perform a compare of your backup to the original. I remember a situation where I could cpio data out to a SCSI tape drive to my hearts content: no error messages or anything indicating any bad karma. But try and read that data back from the tape and you were out of luck. Another fun one was a version of the DOS `copy` command. I'd responsibly use the "/v" option to tell it to verify each copied file. Funny how it thought that a 52 byte file was the same as a 115kb file! Moral is, you must have byte for byte verification in your archive utilities: don't trust - *verify*! -- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Blah Blah Lounge - "Do You Have Something Smart To Say?" Cosmo Lee email: cosmo@echonyc.com Brooklyn, NY * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *