Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    
    
    
    
    I dont' have QBTools but I was talking to Central Coast this past week
    about Quarterback and defragmentation etc, and they did mention that
    there have been a number of problems with QBTools.  They've held up 
    lots of orders till the problems are fixed.  I "think" they're up to
    rev 1.3.3 or something like that.  You best give them a call for 
    specifics.
    
    They told me as soon as they get QBTools squared away, they're sending
    out a mass mailing to Quarterback owners, offering QBTools at a 40%
    discount.  Don't know how that translates into $$.
    
    Frank

    Well, I was able to get V1.2a which appears to correct all known bugs.
    There is a BBS that is apparently providing support for QB Tools users.
    The 40% off deal sounds good - except for those of us who just bought
    the product!
    
    -Paul

    I too recently received the flyer from Central Coast, offering the
    product for about $60, when I had purchased it retail for about $80 a
    few days before.  I don't think Central Coast is making itself any
    friends among the dealers by undercutting their price.
    
    Also, the defragmenter doesn't seem very effective.  It trashed my hard
    disk 4 times out of 4 tries---I had to restore from backup after each
    attempt.  After that much aggrivation I gave up.
    
    I hope they offer a bugfix release to registered owners of the product.
        John Sauter

    V1.2a works just fine on my system. The defrag dramatically improved
    performance on my harddisk. Most noticeable is the speed of directory
    displays now.

    How does one get V1.2a?  Write a letter to Central Coast?
        John Sauter

    Any form of communication will probably get it for you ... a letter is
    nice. A telephone call will cost a bit more than a quarter, but gets
    faster results. You can also call the Flatlands BBS and pick it up
    there. Unfortunately, I do not have their number handy.

    re: .6
    
    Thank you.
        John Sauter

    The current version of Quarterback Tools is up to V1.3a. V1.3a seems a
    bit faster than V1.2a.

How is 1.3a? QB tools seems a bit unstable  yet to trust on my HD...

john

    The only difference *I* noticed from V1.2a (which worked fine on my
    system) was that the CANCEL gadgets now change color when clicked, and
    the various functions seem to run faster. They also added a nice
    transparent mode for reorganizing disks. You just click it on then go
    about whatever other tasks you wanna do.
    
    The release noites suggest other bugette fixes for specific controller
    problems. The new release is available for registered owners from the
    Flatlands BBS, Central Coast Software Support Area.

    I got my copy yesterday, version 1.3b!  this program is a must for hard
    drive users because it works.  I tried disk mechanic (v 2.5) and it
    doesn't work as advertised, the same is true for the drive recovery
    programs of Dunlap utilities.
    
    Central coast software get my vote for best HD programs.
    
    Jean
    

    I recently exchanged my V1.0 for V1.2b at System Eyes.  My new date is
    December 2, 1990---they certainly are faster than DEC at getting
    software out the door!
    
    I tried V1.2b on both of my hard drives, and it worked perfectly on
    both.  I am now a satisfied Quarterback Tools owner.
        John Sauter

I tried to recover a disk using Disk Mechanic V2.7. Nothing works as
advertized. It doesn't mark bad blocks, it can't repair, it can't
recover. A total waste of time & money.

 mark

I tried to recover a hard disk partition of 70MB with DiskDoctor (waiting for 
QB tools!) last night. 

TOTAL DISASTER!

Now I'm struggling to get backups off a tape... I found what appears to
be a gvp bug ... sigh...

lucky is was not a critical volume!

john

    Support for Quarterback and Quarterback Tools is available through the
    Flatlands BBS.  The number is given in the QBTools manual.  If you
    leave a note on the BBS, giving your serial number, you will be granted
    access to the support area.
    
    I purchased QBTools this Tuesday from Memory Location (V1.0).  I had
    V1.3B downloaded that night.  If the BBS is not listed in your manual,
    just call Central Coast Software, Cathy will give you the number.
    
    John
    

    I have tried QBT for the first time last nite on my new Hard Disk.
    
    I have 3 partitions (1 meg, 165meg and 5 megs, more or less)
    the format option in QBT refuse to work on the 165 Meg partition.
    It does however works properly on the 2 other.
    It's telling me that the disk is full... there is at leats 145 meg free.
    Then it say something about corruption.  If I go to disk verification,
    there is no errors at all, it does however compress very good.
    
    I assume that over a certain capacity, QBT just doesn't work too well.
    Beware...
    
    P.S: It says on the top screen that it is version 1.3B
    
    Vince.

    Current version on Flatlands is 1.3C.

Any idea how it differs from 1.3b?

    re: .14
    
    I've heard from many sources (including Dave Haynie, I believe) that
    attempts to use DiskDoctor on FFS are almost certain to trash your
    data...

I have 1.3A.  It works great on my A2000.  I had one problem on my C Ltd. AM-33 
hard drive on my A1000:  There were no icons after I compressed the disk.  The 
documentation mention that this seemed to happen some times.  I could not get 
the disk to work properly after compression.  It refused to loadwb.

Other than that, it seems to be a great.

Randy

    Do you have to format backup floppies before you used QB to backup your
    hard disk?  What I really asking is how convenient is the operation of
    QB? Say I've got floppies with stuff I don't care about on them. Can
    you automatically re-init on the fly? 
    
    How long does it take to back up 40MBytes?
    How many disks?
    
    Thanks,
    Rich

    
    QB formats on the fly, but does not use standard AmigaDOS format. 
    Backup speed is about 1 MB/minute, which is about as fast as any PC can
    backup to floppy.
    
    You can choose whether or not to verify (read after write), which slows
    things down by about 50%.
    
    I usually do a complete verify once to convince myself that my stack of
    floppies is good.
    
    Ed.

    re: .21, .22
    
    Quarterback has an option which will reject AmigaDOS-formatted
    floppies, to prevent you from accidently writing over a disk you
    want to keep.  I always run with read-after-write, and even so 
    changing floppies becomes a mind-numbing operation: just the ticket
    for inserting the wrong disk.
    
    My 40 MB disk is about half full, and it takes me around 20 or 30
    minutes to back it up.
        John Sauter

    Re: .recent:
    
    My hard disk is partitioned, which affects my backup strategy. 
    Quarterback gives me a lot of flexibility in that regard.  In order to
    restore Workbench: (which is only 2MB and normally write-protected to
    keep it static), I keep the two most recent complete saves and an
    incremental (I set the archive bit during the save and prior to doing
    a complete save, I save all the unarchived files first) save that
    represents the difference between them.  These saves are infrequent.
    
    I don't back up the kids' 'Fun & Games:' partition.  We keep the
    original distribution media for whatever is on it.
    
    The most volatile and critical partition is 'Productivity:', which
    holds word processing/DTP documents and spreadsheets.  Here, it makes
    sense to do infrequent complete backups (setting the archive bit) to be
    the basis for recovery plus regular incremental backups of the changed
    files (NOT setting the archive bit, so it accumulates as documents are
    added -- alternately, you can select everything that has changed since
    the date/time of the full backup assuming the system clock has remained
    accurate).
    
    One's basic backup strategy is to AVOID SINGLE POINTS OF FAILURE.  That
    means having more than one executable copy of Quarterback and more than
    one copy of your saved data.  If any single diskette is defective or
    meets with Murphy's Law, one must be able to restore by a different
    means OR at least minimize the data at risk.

    re -.1
    
    One very nice feature of Quarterback is that if you do happen to
    encounter a corrupted file on the backup disk, it will allow you to
    continue with the rest of the backup.  All you have to do is restore
    that particular file.  Even if you lose an entire disk, Quarterback
    will still allow you to complete the backup using the remaining disks.
    
    FWIW:  I do a verified backup on workbench and data partitions.  I
    don't use verify on the programs partition as I keep all original disks
    so a bad backup disk here wouldn't be a disaster.  I also keep install
    instructions for each of the programs, to make program restoration much
    easier.
    
    Ken

    I just backed up my 80 meg hard drive.  It's in three partitions.
    one small one for the operating system.  Two 40 meg partitions, one
    for utilities and work and one for demos and games.  The disk was
    completely full.  It took one floppy for the os partition, 41 for the
    utils and work, and 43 for the games and demos.  All told, it took me
    three hours to do the backup.  Each 40 meg partition took about an
    hour and fifteen minutes (about 1 3/4 minutes per floppy, including
    time to change floppies (I've only got one drive)). I've tried various 
    PD backup utils and none came close to that in speed (and they used 
    more floppies).
    
    This was my first major exercise with Qarterback and I was quite
    pleased.  It would be nice to have a 2nd floppy drive so I could 
    take advantage of QB's ability to use both floppies to run
    continuously.
    
    (I spent the next two hours removing everything that I didn't really
    need on the disk.  Now I've got some SPACE again - for a little
    while..)
    
    Erg

    Thes guys deserve an award for speed of service and customer
    satisfation!  I sent them a FAX with a description of a problem I
    encountered (won't reorganize if the disk has bad blocks) and less than
    two weeks later I get a new version in the mail.
    
    Jean
    

    So does the reorganize feature work with the new version?  A friend of
    mine with QB had it trash his disk so I've been afraid to use it.  What
    version of QB tools do you have now?
    
    Terry

    I have the latest version of QBtools and have used it successfully on
    all my drive partitions.  No disappearing icons, no problems
    whatsoever.  I think I am using v1.3d.(not sure about the letter)  Call 
    the BBS and leave your serial number.  They respond quickly; in my case 
    within the hour.  Great service!
    
    md

    What is the CCS  bbs phone number?? (please no 800 numbers - can't
    access them from outside the USA....)
    
    Regards
    kevin
    

    1-316-686-0870

    The current version is 1.3D.

    Central Coast Software has been absorbed by New Horizions, but will
    continue under the CCS lable. (512)328-6650 is the new number
    	latest revisions
    	MAC to Dos 1.1d
    	Quarterback		4.3 these two may be backwards
    	Quarterback tools	1.5
    							bill