Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: mallen@paradox.apana.org.au (Mark P Allen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Diavolo Backup version 3.0 Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications Date: 9 Nov 1995 17:17:03 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 619 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <47td2f$6c3@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: mallen@paradox.apana.org.au (Mark P Allen) NNTP-Posting-Host: astro.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hard drive, backup, commercial Originator: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Diavolo Backup v3.0 Pro (Diavolo Backup v3.0 also available) BRIEF DESCRIPTION Data Backup program for the Amiga computer. Supports SCSI(2) streamers and removable media, floppy disks (880K/1.76MB, even mixed) and (multiple) disk files. Includes "Image" backup option, and capability to backup MovieShop(tm) (VLAB Motion) disks/partitions. Note: Diavolo Backup v3.0 (non-Pro version) comes without removable media, Image, and MovieShop(tm) backup support. It also comes without the Scheduler and API (Application Programming Interface). AUTHOR Name: Martin Korndoerfer E-mail: m.korndoerfer@nathan.gun.de DISTRIBUTION Company: Computer Corner, Address: Albert Rosshaupterstr. 108 81369 Munich, Germany Telephone: (+49) (0)89 / 714 10 34 FAX: (+49) (0)89 / 714 43 95 A full demo version of the program (Restore disabled, Backup and Compare fully functional) is available in Aminet's biz/demo directory, and will also be on Aminet CD 8 and Aminet CD Set 2. LIST PRICE Diavolo backup v3.0 Pro: $US90/DM135 Diavolo Backup v3.0: $US64/DM98 Upgrades between different versions of the program (including from v1.x to v3.x) simply cost the difference between their original prices. Diavolo is not widely available, and therefore a credit card purchase proved the simplest way for me to to buy it (with the automatic currency exchange it allows) from its German distributor. I believe a UK distributor is being negotiated. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE 2MB RAM minimum (FAST RAM recommended) Hard disk(s) Hard disk installation requires approximately 1.1MB available disk space. Floppy installation also possible (see below) SOFTWARE Works under all AmigaDOS revisions including and after v2.04 Selected XPK libraries provided for data compression and encryption capability (NUKE, FAST, FEAL) COMPATIBILITY * Works on 68k family of Motorola processors, including 060 * Universal QIC/DAT streamer compatibility, including C= 3070 (Caliper). COPY PROTECTION Copyright is protected by an individual serial number in the main executable. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING * Amiga A3000T, 2MB Chip RAM, no Fast RAM on motherboard scsi.device: - Pioneer DRM-602x 6 stacker CD-ROM (SCSI-2, external) * WARP Engine 4040, SCSI-2 FAST host, 20MB FAST RAM warpdrive.device: - Quantum LPS525S (500MB) HD (SCSI-2) - Micropolis 4110 (1GB) HD (SCSI-2 FAST) - Exabyte EXB-4200c 4mm DAT Streamer (SCSI-2) * Kickstart 40.68 Workbench 40.42 (WB 3.1) * DOpus5 as WB replacement * GVP Spectrum, CyberGraphX 2.10 registered, SAMPO AlphaScan 15gx monitor * OpalVision, Electronic Design Y/C Genlock, C= 1084s monitor * Various video peripherals, Sunrise AD1012, HP LJ4L printer, ZyXEL U-1496e+ modem etc INSTALLATION Installation is easily accomplished using the supplied standard Installer and script. The Installer intelligently checks the versions of any currently installed libraries. The installation process offers the (recommended) option to create an Emergency Boot Floppy Disk. This can also be performed at any other time by simply clicking on the "MakeBootDisk" icon that is always available in the Diavolo directory. It is recommended that this is performed AFTER Diavolo has been configured for your system, so that the appropriate preferences are included on the floppy disk. The Emergency Floppy Installation took about 905K of floppy disk space on a 1.76MB floppy disk, due to its intelligently including my CyberGraphX libraries in the installation (very nice touch IMO). CyberGraphX users without high-density floppy drives should temporarily remove the cybergraphics.library, and set their screen mode to an appropriate ECS/AGA screenmode before making the 880K boot floppy disk. This will allow the successful creation of an 880K Emergency Boot Disk. Non-CyberGraphX users should have no problem creating an 880K Emergency Boot Floppy Disk as long as only ONE monitor is selected when the choice is presented. The author is currently looking into a better method of performing this installation, due to the current limitations presented by the standard Installer given the wide variety of system configurations currently in use. CONFIGURATION On first running the program, you can use "Auto Configuration" (in the "Diavolo Streamer tape / Removable medium settings" configuration section) to automatically "tune" your configuration. This tests each SCSI ID on every installed host it detects in the system for tape streamers. On finding one, it asks whether you wish to accept the device, or continue the search. On the user accepting the device found, Diavolo then asks for media to be inserted so that it can test the device for supported commands and features (eg., fast seek, direct seek, update in place) etc. It also warns that any data on the tape will be destroyed in the process. This process can be aborted at any stage before any writing is actually performed, but the supported features will not have been determined if you do. As well as auto-configuration capability, it is also possible to specify drive type. This addresses known problems with the C= 3070 (Caliper) streamer (if you use this device, specify QIC 150/250. Other users will be well served by the auto-configuration option). Diavolo Pro also comes with API (Application Programming Interface) capability, with a sample program, DBCLICtrl, included. DBCLICtrl allows the launching of backup sessions via the CLI, and therefore from Cron events etc, including full control over desired filters, log files and error reports etc. MAIN REVIEW There are many aspects of the program that, for one reason or another, I am unable to test. I refer to it's advertised ability to: - backup AFS and MuFS filesystems - backup hard and soft-links - backup VLAB Motion's MovieShop(tm) projects - backup to removable media (without using filesystem), eg., Syquest, ZIP, Bernoulli etc Note: a README file that arrived with the registered distribution warned that the capability to backup/restore multi-assignments was temporarily broken and therefore disabled in this release. The author has subsequently mused that unless users show a specific interest in this feature, it will possibly not be included due to the complexity of the task, and the fact that it was not even used by owners of previous versions when it was available. However, he remains open to suggestions from users regarding this matter. Personally, while the feature sounds "cool", I do not see myself needing it, even though I do use multi-assignments (for fonts, c and libs) on my system. What I have tested: - backup to mixed 880K/1.76MB floppy disks in one session - backup to multiple disk files - backup to SCSI-2 Exabyte 4200c 4mm DAT streamer - equivalent restore operations to the above items INTERFACE Diavolo sports an attractive, system complaint GUI and menu interface, offering extensive keyboard as well as mouse control over it's features. It is responsive and extremely informative about all facets of operation. There is always something there to let you know exactly what the status of the program is, and how it is/has performed. Diavolo has full public and custom screen support, and allows the selection of the font used, as well as filesystem (1.3, 2.0->3.0, 3.1 or better), byte display (MB or K), directory tree structure, packet I/O, auto compare and buffer size. The interface offers full MagicWB support if MagicWB is detected on the system. It sports attractive imagery for the three main Backup, Restore and Compare options, as well as imagery on the individual media backup/restore screens (including very neat representations where multiple media is required for a specified backup session). However, for those that chose not to use it, MagicWB is certainly not a requirement. Intelligent palette handling is provided for standard screens down to 4 colours for the imagery. Many options available from the GUI are also selectable from the menu, which also offers items for generating filelists, error reports and clearing the file and selection lists. Complete control over a tape streamer is provided in the Rewind, Retense, Eject and Erase menu items, as well as Show Tape Contents and Rebuild Tape Index options. The window that opens on the WB can also be snapshot, freed (defaults back to centre screen) and zipped (shows title bar with useful status information (current operation, % completed etc). The Global Configuration menu item provides control over several aspects of Diavolo's overall operation. Since Diavolo performs it's duties using several co-operative tasks (rather than one single one) you can control the priorities of Hard-disk, (Un)Packing and Backup Medium tasks. While I have left these at the default "0" priority, the author says that under certain circumstances (particularly when backing up to disk), some performance improvement can be obtained by increasing the Backup Medium task priority by 1. Obviously, if you wanted to perform a backup while multi-tasking with an even less CPU intensive task than Diavolo, you can also reduce these priorities accordingly for smooth multi-tasking. For those interested in automatic and intelligent handling of task priorities and efficient multi-tasking, I recently installed Executive (the new task/priority management system) on my machine, and found that Diavolo was perfectly happy with it's auto-management of the task priorities. While I did not note the priorities Executive actually set for the tasks (probably around -77), there was certainly no performance loss, and multi-tasking remained smooth and efficient. Settings can be Loaded and Saved. BACKUP I have found that best performance on my configuration is obtained with an I/O buffer of 8MB FAST RAM. All tests described below were conducted with such a buffer. Without being able to actually test certain devices and machine configurations, I might anticipate that a slower QIC streamer, for instance, may well achieve maximum performance with only, say, 4MB FAST RAM buffers, though this would also be greatly affected by the CPU of the host machine, especially if compression is used. Floppy backups will probably work at more or less full speed with almost any reasonably sized buffer on almost any CPU. The backup configuration window offers the usual array of choices over compression (including XPK compression type and amount), media checks, setting of protection bits, passwords, encryption library, and whether to save hard-linked dirs and files. * General Feedback (backup screen) includes: - Directory (name) - File (name) - Directories read (#) - Directories left (#) - Files read (#) - Files left (#) - Bytes read (#) - Bytes left (#) - Packer (XPK name) - Gain (kB) - Compression (%) - Disks to go (#) - Disks done (#) - Elapsed (hh:mm:ss) - Speed (kB/min) - To go (hh:mm:ss) Note: the Speed (kB/min) indicator shows real-time performance. Ie., in accordance with the types of data being backed up, this figure will rise and fall (eg., higher with ASCII and executables, lower with compressed graphics, LHA archives etc). Comprehensive statistical averages are provided at the end of each session in a separate requester. The speed results below are taken from the statistical averages. * Floppy: Supports 4 floppy drives Tested Speed result: - no compression/verify = 600K/min - XPK NUKE 100%/verify = 1000K/min - XPK NUKE 100%/no verify = 1700K/min Note: while the 3rd test certainly returned impressive speed, I would not recommend it due to the vulnerable integrity of floppy disk media in general. It is provided for reference only. * Disk files: Tested Speed result: 5MB/min (backup to same partition) 15MB/min (backup to different partition) * Exabyte 4200c 4mm DAT streamer: Tested Speed result: 13MB/min to 15MB/min File Selection: Diavolo offers several methods of defining which partitions or directories to backup, including "drag'n'drop"ing WB icons onto the backup window, filters, selecting partitions from the backup listview, or from a "Directory" gadget on the backup window (using system requester). Filters are configured by "macro recording" your selection of partitions from the listview. Once done, this means that if you have a complex combination of partitions as part of a normal backup procedure, you simply select the filter you want to use by using the "Filter" gadget on the backup window (or the filter options of the DBCLICtrl command or the Scheduler GUI), and the appropriate selections are scanned for backing up. The simple command format used by the filters is covered in the manual, so you can also easily create or modify your own filter scripts in any text editor. Filter scripts are used to create permanent, simple or complex, selection criteria for re-use. Initially, I could not find a way to determine the order in which partitions selected for backup were actually processed. Ie., no matter what order I selected them in, they were processed in the order in which AmigaDOS presents them to Diavolo. In my case, this was exactly the reverse of what I wanted. The author replied to my query regarding this with the explanation that if DEVICENAME is used instead of VOLUMENAME, the order in which they are processed can indeed be controlled. While some requester replacements will not allow the manual entry of a DEVICENAME (will automatically revert it to it's VOLUMENAME), others will, so that the order can often be determined via the "Directory" gadget. When using Filters, simply edit with any text editor, and replace VOLUMENAMES with their DEVICENAMES, and arrange the order of processing to suit your needs. Scheduling: Diavolo Pro also sports a full featured scheduling program and daemon for auto execution of backup sessions. Since I only backup about once per week, I see little reason to leave a 32K daemon running in memory all the time (the same goes for Ami-Back), and was therefore grateful for the DBCLICtrl program that allowed simple execution from the Cron program I already have running for the scheduling of many other system maintenance and communications tasks. However, the Scheduler does offer some extra features, in the form of "late backups" and unusual schedules like "every 1st Monday in the month" and "2nd and last Sunday in the month". The "late backup" option allows for prompting the user on turning on the machine as to whether he wishes to perform the backup that was missed while the machine was turned off. Certainly a unique and potentially very useful feature (eg., after some unexpected downtime). Compression: The XPK libraries NUKE, FAST and FEAL are provided in the installation. It is not recommended to use other XPK libraries for various reasons, including a minor bug in the xpkmaster.library itself, which these three supplied libraries compensate for. Other XPK libraries can be used, but the author states that in these cases, all backups MUST immediately be compared to ensure backup integrity. Experimentation with various combinations of compression (XPK only, XPK + hardware, hardware only [available on my Exabyte 4200c DAT streamer]) produced interesting, though I would not necessarily say conclusive, results. I found XPK NUKE with hardware compression turned off to provide the fastest results. I do not know enough about this technology to know the whys or wherefores, but this certainly appeared to provide the fastest delivery of data to the tape streamer, as surprised as I was by the result. I repeat that I do not consider my tests in this regard as conclusive. Since hardware compression provides no feedback of the final compression ratio, it cannot be compared to the XPK results, which (using NUKE 100%) provided 18% compression on data predominantly comprised of graphics (mostly JPEG, GIF and IFF24), animations to 24-bits, audio samples to 16-bits, and LHA archives. About 20% consisted of executables and their attendant accessories. I noted that on tests involving executables and text only, NUKE 100% achieved compression rates of up to 51%, while even spreads of data types seemed to produce averages around 34%. Appending Backups: If the option to overwrite an existing backup has not been explicitly chosen, Diavolo presents a graphical representation of a backup media's contents once it has read the media's index. This offers easy to read feedback of the media's contents, allowing you to select from which point you wish to append the next write operation, eg., (for DAT streamers) from the beginning, or after backup session 1, or 10, or whatever you desire. Since QIC drives cannot overwrite parts of a tape's contents, this representation offers either complete overwrite, or append from the end of existing data only for these drives. This implementation is remarkably simple and effective, leaving the user confident of the status of the backup media and it's contents. COMPARE/RESTORE The restore configuration window offers the expected options regarding the restoration of dirs/files from a backup, including "ask before replacing", "keep existing", "replace existing", "replace older", "rename existing", and "rebuild dir structure". * General Feedback (compare screen) includes: - Directory (name) - File (name) - Directories read (#) - Directories left (#) - Files compared (#) - Mismatched files (#) - Bytes compared (#) - Newer files (#) - Unreadable files (#) - Fileheader mismatch (#) - Missing files (#) - Identical files (#) - Disks to go (#) - Disks done (#) - Elapsed (hh:mm:ss) - Speed (kB/min) - To go (hh:mm:ss) * Floppy: Tested Speed result: - no compression/verify = 1300K/min - XPK NUKE 100%/verify = 1700K - 2000K/min - XPK NUKE 100%/no verify = 1700K - 2000K/min * Disk files: Tested Speed result: 5MB/min (backup to same partition) 15MB/min (backup to different partition) * Exabyte 4200c 4mm DAT streamer: Tested Speed result: 6MB/min to 14MB/min As a further test, I selected 3 files within a 750MB archive to restore. The files were small, and each located several directories deep and 200MB to 300MB apart in the backed up filesystem. Diavolo located and restored all 3 files within the space of 1 (ONE) minute using the DAT streamer's direct seek capability. Since QIC drives do not support direct seek, Diavolo will take as long as it takes to locate each file sequentially as it scans the backup data to perform this operation. DOCUMENTATION Currently, the manual is only available in German. For this reason I requested that I forego a manual until the English one is finished. In the interim I have only the demo version's supplied readme for documentation, and the author's answers to my queries. The English manual is expected to be available November '95. LIKES What's not to like? :^) Specifically, I like the interface, the speed, what appears to be an excellent SCSI(2) implementation (ie., the program talks and listens to the system and device drivers carefully and comprehensively), the features and options available, as well as the extensive statistical and status information and feedback during operation. I also like the active and ongoing development and support the program enjoys from it's author. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS I wouldn't actually call it a dislike, since it doesn't impact on my own system, however the executable size of 510K may well impact on RAM availability on less well endowed machine configurations. However, I might also speculate that many users backing up to faster media (therefore requiring optimum RAM buffers for greatest throughput) will often have the appropriate RAM resources available to them. I might similarly speculate that users of low-end machines, ie., those less likely to have the RAM resources for large buffers, will generally use slower backup mediums (requiring much smaller buffers). There are always exceptions to rules however. Regardless of these matters, the executable is big, and on raising this matter with the author, he stated that making the program more modular is already a priority for a future revision of the program, thereby reducing the RAM overheads of the program's tasks during operation. This is good news and serves only to make what is already a superb application even better. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS Over the years I have used Quarterback v3, v4 and v5, and Ami-Back v2 (to 2.0h, I couldn't use the "i" patch). Quarterback dropped out of the race ages ago when Ami-Back, with it's speed, multiple partition and append backup support, arrived on the scene. Diavolo, similarly, takes up where Ami-Back left off. Speed of operation is similar to Ami-Back, however Diavolo's system compliance, features, controls and feedback are far superior. Amiback seems to achieve highest speeds using reasonably small buffers (I used 2 x 1MB buffers), whereas for Diavolo to reach a similar operating speed as Ami-Back on my DAT drive, a buffer of about 8MB is required. I believe this is due to the design of the program (eg., multiple tasks etc), and also provides benefits in other areas of operation (eg., more efficient multi-tasking). Speaking of which, Diavolo is also superior to Ami-Back during multi-tasking (regardless of the recent installation here of Executive, as mentioned previously, which is designed to streamline multi-tasking operations system-wide), with even screen blankers able to continue smoothly where Ami-Back causes blanker "stuttering" (system Blanker and MultiCX blanker) during backup/restore operations. Another thing I really like compared to Ami-Back (it used to annoy the hell out of me ;^), is that if a backup is aborted for any reason, the current selection of partitions, directories and files is retained and available for immediate re-use. Ami-Back always dumped the whole scan in this situation, meaning that a restart always meant from the very beginning (a total pain on backups containing 25,000+ files or measured in the hundreds of MB). BUGS No bugs encountered whatsoever. In all aspects the program has behaved as expected/advertised since installation (approximately 2 months and 20 or so backups). VENDOR SUPPORT I started communicating with the author some time before this new version of the program was released (I have not used previous versions), after I had been told of it's imminent release (I was tired of Ami-Back, couldn't install the lastest patch, and missed product support and development). He has been prompt and courteous in all correspondence, and answered any questions in depth. I have no reason to doubt that after sales support would elicit the same service. I have absolutely no connection with the author or his agents except as a happy customer. This review is an entirely independent initiative. WARRANTY The usual disclaimers apply (ie., all efforts are made to make the program bug free etc...no responsibility for lost or damaged data assumed etc). CONCLUSIONS Diavolo v3.0 Pro is an excellent product, and is currently (IMHO) by far the best available for backing up your Amiga system's data. I rate it as a high quality and professional computer tool that enhances the Amiga system in usage, security and profile. If the manual is as well thought out and implemented as the software, I have no hesitation in rating the program: +--------------+ | 4.8 out of 5 | +--------------+ In fact, it's hard not to award Diavolo 5 out of 5 for the thought and effort that has gone into it's creation. However some room must be left for possible future enhancements ;^) If you're after a serious, well presented, reliable, feature laden and yet remarkably easy to use data backup program (that also happens to enjoy continuing development and support) for your system, Diavolo is a "must have" IMO. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1995 Mark P Allen. email: mallen@paradox.apana.org.au --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews