4 ms·

Wow, that backup software sounds like garbage. Why not just use tar? Why would anyone reinvent that wheel?

by db48x 3y ago

giantrobot 3y ago
IIRC tar has some Unixisms that don't necessarily work for Windows/NTFS. Not saying reinventing tar is appropriate but there's Windows/NTFS that a Windows based tape backup need to support.
- cosmotic 3y ago
  Most of what makes NTFS different than FAT probably doesn't need to be backed up. Complex ACLs, alternative data streams, shadow copies, etc, are largely irrelevant when it comes to making a backup. Just a simple warning "The data being backed up includes alternative data streams. These aren't supported and won't be included in the backup" would suffice.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    All of that stuff matters when you're using the backup for its intended purpose: to restore a system after hardware failure. Unix tar is obviously not the right solution, but a Windows tar seems like it shouldn't be that hard to do and yet we are in the situation we are today. I've been using dump/restore for decades now on Unix, including to actually recover from loss, but I admit that it's not that pleasant to use. I like that it is very simple and reliable however, unlike the mess that is Time Machine (recovering from a hardware loss on a Mac is a roll of the dice, and I've gotten snakes) or worse Deja Dup. I'm not sure I've ever successfully recovered a system from a Deja Dup backup.
    - cosmotic 3y ago
      I think the use case for disaster recovery is a bit different than long-term archival.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        Does anyone buying tape storage actually use it for archival rather than disaster recovery?
        kjs3 3y ago
        We do. We have vast amounts of data that we merely have to keep around for a decade or so for compliance purposes that would rarely be accessed, so it goes on tape and off to Iron Mountain. Then we have backups where we need to be able to recover a running system from some 'known good' state, which is somewhat complicated. The former is conceptually tape drive+tar/cpio/etc.; the latter is an expensive setup that includes some proprietary solutions.
    - a1369209993 3y ago
      > using the backup for its intended purpose: to restore a system after hardware failure. No. The intended purpose of a backup is to restore the data (such as the Frogger 2 source code) after a hardware failure. If it has the side effect of also producing a working system, that's good, but it's not the point. After all, the hardware necessary to build a working system may not exist any more; one (only-probably not the last) instance of said hardware just broke, after all.
      - Spooky23 3y ago
        The metadata matters.
      - kjs3 3y ago
        Your one trivial use case isn't all use cases, and it sure isn't my important one. If you're doing more than backing up your personal workstation, metadata is extremely important. If I ever have to restore something, even just data, out of the multi-petabytes we have on tape, I better not have to manually go through it to figure out who should actually have access to it before I make it available to the people who need it.
  - nycdotnet 3y ago
    If you’re backing up a db or something sure, but for a file server this can be just as important as the data itself (ex: now everyone can read HR’s personnel files which had strict permissions before)
- ilyt 3y ago
  The format is extensible enough that it could be added
- db48x 3y ago
  That’s fair; I wasn’t really considering windows. It seems like there ought to be some equivalent by now though.
robotnikman 3y ago
The company that made it probably was hoping for vendor lock-in
- cosmotic 3y ago
  Vendor lock in for backup and archival products is so ridiculous. It increases R&D to ensure the lock-in, and the company won't exist by the time the lock-in takes effect.
  - fifteen1506 3y ago
    Well yes, but the boss probably is willing to invest more money (meaning higher salaries, more people, better tools) expecting a future return than when using reasonable formats.
bombcar 3y ago
The world of tape backup was (is?) absolutely filled with all sorts of vendor-lock in projects and tools. It's a complete mess. And even various versions of tar aren't compatible, and that's not even starting with star and friends.
- stepupmakeup 3y ago
  It's not just limited to tape, most archiving and backup software is proprietary. It's impossible to open Acronis or Macrium Reflect images without their Windows software. In Acronis's case they even make it impossible to use offline or on a server OS without paying for a license. NTBackup is awfully slow and doesn't work past Vista, and it's not even part of XP POSReady for whatever reason, so I had to rip the exe from a XP ISO and unpack it (NTBACKUP._EX... I forgot microsoft's term for that) because the Vista version available on Microsoft's site specifically checks for longhorn or vista. Then there's slightly more obscure formats that didn't take off in the western world, and the physical mediums too. Not many people had the pleasure of having to extract hundreds of "GCA" files off of MO disks using obscure Japanese freeware from 2002. The English version of the software even has a bunch of flags on virustotal that the standard one doesn't. And there's obscure LZH compression algorithms that no tool available now can handle. I've found myself setting up one-time Windows 2000/XP VMs just to access backups made after 2000.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    I can only speak for macrium but they have good reasons to use their own format, so that you can have differential mountable backups. That's very different from someone inventing tar-but-worse.
- jandrese 3y ago
  I have at various times considered a tape backup solution for my home, but always give up when it seems every tape vendor is only interested in business clients. It was a race to stay ahead of hard drives and oftentimes they seemed to be losing. The price points were clearly aimed at business customers, especially on the larger capacity tapes. In the end I do backup to hard drives instead because it's much cheaper and faster.
EvanAnderson 3y ago
ARCServe was a Computer Associates product. That's all you need to know. It had a great reputation on Novell Netware but the Windows product was a mess. I never had a piece of backup management software cause blue screens (e.g. kernel panics) before an unfortunate Customer introduced me to ARCServe on Windows.
- nycdotnet 3y ago
  My favorite ArcServe bug which they released a patch for (and which didn’t actually fix the issue, as I recall) had a KB article called something along the lines of “The Open Database Backup Agent for Lotus Notes Cannot Backup Open Databases”.

Wow, that backup software sounds like garbage. Why not just use tar? Why would anyone reinvent that wheel?

by db48x 3y ago

Wow, that backup software sounds like garbage. Why not just use tar? Why would anyone reinvent that wheel?

IIRC tar has some Unixisms that don't necessarily work for Windows/NTFS. Not saying reinventing tar is appropriate but there's Windows/NTFS that a Windows based tape backup need to support.

cosmotic 3y ago
Most of what makes NTFS different than FAT probably doesn't need to be backed up. Complex ACLs, alternative data streams, shadow copies, etc, are largely irrelevant when it comes to making a backup. Just a simple warning "The data being backed up includes alternative data streams. These aren't supported and won't be included in the backup" would suffice.
- jandrese 3y ago
  All of that stuff matters when you're using the backup for its intended purpose: to restore a system after hardware failure. Unix tar is obviously not the right solution, but a Windows tar seems like it shouldn't be that hard to do and yet we are in the situation we are today. I've been using dump/restore for decades now on Unix, including to actually recover from loss, but I admit that it's not that pleasant to use. I like that it is very simple and reliable however, unlike the mess that is Time Machine (recovering from a hardware loss on a Mac is a roll of the dice, and I've gotten snakes) or worse Deja Dup. I'm not sure I've ever successfully recovered a system from a Deja Dup backup.
  - cosmotic 3y ago
    I think the use case for disaster recovery is a bit different than long-term archival.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Does anyone buying tape storage actually use it for archival rather than disaster recovery?
      - kjs3 3y ago
        We do. We have vast amounts of data that we merely have to keep around for a decade or so for compliance purposes that would rarely be accessed, so it goes on tape and off to Iron Mountain. Then we have backups where we need to be able to recover a running system from some 'known good' state, which is somewhat complicated. The former is conceptually tape drive+tar/cpio/etc.; the latter is an expensive setup that includes some proprietary solutions.
  - a1369209993 3y ago
    > using the backup for its intended purpose: to restore a system after hardware failure. No. The intended purpose of a backup is to restore the data (such as the Frogger 2 source code) after a hardware failure. If it has the side effect of also producing a working system, that's good, but it's not the point. After all, the hardware necessary to build a working system may not exist any more; one (only-probably not the last) instance of said hardware just broke, after all.
    - Spooky23 3y ago
      The metadata matters.
    - kjs3 3y ago
      Your one trivial use case isn't all use cases, and it sure isn't my important one. If you're doing more than backing up your personal workstation, metadata is extremely important. If I ever have to restore something, even just data, out of the multi-petabytes we have on tape, I better not have to manually go through it to figure out who should actually have access to it before I make it available to the people who need it.
- nycdotnet 3y ago
  If you’re backing up a db or something sure, but for a file server this can be just as important as the data itself (ex: now everyone can read HR’s personnel files which had strict permissions before)
ilyt 3y ago
The format is extensible enough that it could be added
db48x 3y ago
That’s fair; I wasn’t really considering windows. It seems like there ought to be some equivalent by now though.

robotnikman 3y ago

The company that made it probably was hoping for vendor lock-in

cosmotic 3y ago
Vendor lock in for backup and archival products is so ridiculous. It increases R&D to ensure the lock-in, and the company won't exist by the time the lock-in takes effect.
- fifteen1506 3y ago
  Well yes, but the boss probably is willing to invest more money (meaning higher salaries, more people, better tools) expecting a future return than when using reasonable formats.

bombcar 3y ago

The world of tape backup was (is?) absolutely filled with all sorts of vendor-lock in projects and tools. It's a complete mess. And even various versions of tar aren't compatible, and that's not even starting with star and friends.

stepupmakeup 3y ago
It's not just limited to tape, most archiving and backup software is proprietary. It's impossible to open Acronis or Macrium Reflect images without their Windows software. In Acronis's case they even make it impossible to use offline or on a server OS without paying for a license. NTBackup is awfully slow and doesn't work past Vista, and it's not even part of XP POSReady for whatever reason, so I had to rip the exe from a XP ISO and unpack it (NTBACKUP._EX... I forgot microsoft's term for that) because the Vista version available on Microsoft's site specifically checks for longhorn or vista. Then there's slightly more obscure formats that didn't take off in the western world, and the physical mediums too. Not many people had the pleasure of having to extract hundreds of "GCA" files off of MO disks using obscure Japanese freeware from 2002. The English version of the software even has a bunch of flags on virustotal that the standard one doesn't. And there's obscure LZH compression algorithms that no tool available now can handle. I've found myself setting up one-time Windows 2000/XP VMs just to access backups made after 2000.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  I can only speak for macrium but they have good reasons to use their own format, so that you can have differential mountable backups. That's very different from someone inventing tar-but-worse.
jandrese 3y ago
I have at various times considered a tape backup solution for my home, but always give up when it seems every tape vendor is only interested in business clients. It was a race to stay ahead of hard drives and oftentimes they seemed to be losing. The price points were clearly aimed at business customers, especially on the larger capacity tapes. In the end I do backup to hard drives instead because it's much cheaper and faster.

EvanAnderson 3y ago

ARCServe was a Computer Associates product. That's all you need to know. It had a great reputation on Novell Netware but the Windows product was a mess. I never had a piece of backup management software cause blue screens (e.g. kernel panics) before an unfortunate Customer introduced me to ARCServe on Windows.

nycdotnet 3y ago
My favorite ArcServe bug which they released a patch for (and which didn’t actually fix the issue, as I recall) had a KB article called something along the lines of “The Open Database Backup Agent for Lotus Notes Cannot Backup Open Databases”.