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Identify PC backup program, anyone?

Digging through my old floppies, I found a copy of PCTools 3.23, which, I think was the first version of PCTools with backup/restore. Well, it's close enough to the backup/restore in PCTools 4.1 that you couldn't tell the difference--and the file format is essentially the same--and a country mile from the backup program shown above.

One odd thing is that the mystery backup program creates a FASTBACK or PCBACKUP 10-sector disk, but instead of using head IDs of 250/251 or 224/225, it uses the normal 0 and 1. (FASTBACK plus creates a standard 9-sector format).

Anyone remember a backup program from the time called SITBACK?
 
Thanks for the offer, I'll have to research if the backup utility is much different from 4.1 or 6.0, however. This task is getting very frustrating...
 
I'm Sorry to revive this thread, but I'm currently reading old floppies with such Backups. Often it's written something like "DMA-Mode!" on the stickers. I guess that might be an option how to backup the Data on those floppies. I only saw entries about a fdd controler on the net on MDMA or the like on DMA-Mode, though. Also either PCTOOLS 5.3 or 5.5 are on some stickers.

Code: 
00000000  50 43 42 41 43 4b 55 50  2e 03 00 50 43 42 00 06  |PCBACKUP...PCB..|

The 2e 03 correlates with Number 03 of the backup.

I'll try to recover the backup. Hopefully it will work. Four Tracks of one floppy are recognize as 9/9 instead of 10/10 and some sectors of particular floppies aren't readable, though.

If I find a solution to this I will report.
 
Here are some information about CPBackup. I did not yet tested that out personally.

For 360K DD Floppies the format got 10 instead of 9 sectors per track.

The Central Point Backup Software CPBackup uses a proprietary format for floppy disks that deviates from standard DOS formats. Here are some key points about this format:
  1. CP Backup Floppy Formatting:
    • CP Backup formats disks in a way that DOS can recognize them but cannot work with them directly.
    • The disk uses a standard BIOS Parameter Block (BPB), File Allocation Tables (FATs), and a root directory, but indicates that all clusters are damaged.
    • The BPB specifies a standard Sectors Per Track (SPT) of 15, but the disk is actually formatted with 16 SPT.
    • When you run the DIR command on a CP Backup floppy, it displays a list of mostly zero-length files.
    • If the list is unsorted (the default behavior of DOS), you’ll see a message indicating that the disk does not use the normal DOS format and needs to be reformatted for use with DOS.
    • If the list is sorted (e.g., using 4DOS), the message may be harder to interpret.
    • AnaDisk can dump CP Backup floppies and create images with a size of 1,310,720 bytes, which is larger than a standard image with 1,228,800 bytes.
    • Other tools like IBM’s XDFCOPY or Norton’s DiskEdit may struggle with this format.
  2. Speed Modes:
    • CP Backup can operate in three different modes for disk access: DOS-compatible (slow), medium speed, and high speed.
    • Backups created in high-speed mode (the default mode) cannot be restored in “compatible” mode.
It’s important to note that CP Backup is not as extreme as XDF or 2M when it comes to providing DOS-compatible floppy structures. It uses a consistent geometry that can at least function on non-DOS systems and can be adequately represented by a raw image. No interleaving or sector slipping techniques appear to be used. CP Backup’s speed primarily results from its optimized disk access, efficiently transferring data without wasting time between disk rotations.
Click to expand...

From the PCTOOLS Manual
CPBackup 7

  • Program Name or Type:
    • CPBACKUP.EXE: CPBackup program for DOS (located in the PCTOOLS directory).
    • CPB1EXE: Mechanism for creating DOS backups of diskettes (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPB2.EXE: Mechanism for restoring DOS diskettes (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPB3.EXE: Mechanism for creating DMA backups of diskettes (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPB4.EXE: Mechanism for restoring DMA diskettes (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPB5.EXE: Creates directories for diskettes and tapes (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPB6.COM: Formats diskettes during backup creation (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPBT3.EXE: Mechanism for creating DMA backups of tapes (confidential CPS format, located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPBT4.EXE: Mechanism for restoring DMA tapes (confidential CPS format, located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPBT5.EXE: Creates directories for tapes (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPBQ3.EXE: Mechanism for creating DMA backups of tapes (QIC-compatible format, located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPBQ4.EXE: Mechanism for restoring DMA tapes (QIC-compatible format, located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPBQ5.EXE: Creates directories for QIC-compatible tapes (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPBDIR.EXE: Diskette identification program (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPBH.EXE: Help mechanism (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPBV.EXE: Mechanism for virus scanning and reporting (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPBX.EXE: Express mode mechanism (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPBACKUP.MSG: File containing help messages in the message line (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CPSCHED.EXE: Planner file for scheduling unattended backups, email, and commute sessions (located in the PCTOOLS directory).
    • CPB.OVL: Overlay file for the planner (located in the SYSTEM directory).
    • CONVERT.EXE: Converts Norton and Fastback settings files to CPBackup settings files (located in the PCTOOLS directory).
    • CPBACKUP.CFG: Configuration file created by CPBackup (located in the DATA directory).
    • *.SET: Settings files created by CPBackup (located in the DATA directory).
    • MEX: Manually created file selections (located in the DATA directory).
    • xyymmdds.DIR: Directory files created by CPBackup (where .t=drive, yymmdd=date, s=sequence) (located in the DATA directory).
    • xyymmdds.RPB: Backup reports created by CPBackup (located in the DATA directory).
    • xyymmdds.RPC: Comparison reports created by CPBackup (located in the DATA directory).
    • CPBACKUP.TM: Contains S (located in the DATA directory).
Click to expand...
Page 112-113 in https://oldcomputers.dyndns.org/public/pub/manuals/other/pctools-7-1_(ger_bw_400).pdf

PC Backup (included in PC Tools 6, Central Point) notes​


Central Point's PC Tools 6 includes PC Backup, which is notable for 1. Taking a very long time (over 90 seconds) to scan the hard disk for directories when it starts up on an 8088, and 2. totally making up for that by supporting the Central Point Option Board to speed up diskette format operations by nearly 50%. The interface was quite adequate, being easy to understand for most user levels.
PC Backup's "proprietary" format is similar to Norton Backup's format, except that instead of using 5 1024-byte sectors on 39 out of 40 tracks, it uses 10 512-byte sectors on every track of the disk. The amount of usable space is the same. Interestingly, it does not pretend to be a DOS disk at all and doesn't contain a "fake" directory with a message to the user (trying to read it returns "NON-DOS diskette"), but it does contain a boot block that prints out "This disk can't boot: it was formatted by PCBACKUP. Change Disks and Press a Key." if booted.

Central Point Backup (PC DOS 2000) notes​

A pack-in with IBM PC DOS 2000, Central Point Backup's interface was the most functional and pretty. It was also slower than the others, which, combined with the generally lackluster file reading speed, made Central Point Backup the slowest program in the test. It is possible that this uneven speed contributed to the program taking longer with "save time" compression than "save disks (low)" compression (!).
Central Point Backup's "proprietary" format is similar to Norton Backup's format, except that instead of using 5 1024-byte sectors on 39 out of 40 tracks, it uses 10 512-byte sectors on every track of the disk. The amount of usable space is the same, as is the "Do not use this diskette" directory message.
While I had an Option Board in the test computer (see "PC Backup" above for why this is significant), support for it seems to have been removed in this PC DOS 2000 pack-in version.
Click to expand...
http://www.oldskool.org/guides/dosbackupshootout Dec 21, 2015

The Central Point Backup Floppy Format​

by Michal Necasek

The Central Point Backup Floppy Format | OS/2 Museum

www.os2museum.com www.os2museum.com
 
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Note that my original posting was from 9 years ago--I don't even remember the job anymore.
Recovering backups since then has gotten quite a bit more interesting. I've had several jobs (including non-PC) where only parts (floppies or tapes) of a backup have surfaced. The job then becomes quite a bit more involved, calling for custom solutions.

Thus far, I've been successful in all of them, but it does require a fair amount of headscratching. I think the latest was several sets of floppies, mostly incomplete from RSX11 BRU. Needless to say, most were missing the first volume...
 
I tried it within DOSBOX, but that lead into BIOS errors on floppy access, because the images aren't represented as hardware floppy drives. They are mounted instead and that fails due to the different format. The floppies are written in DMA-mode with 10 sectors per Track and with no FAT file system.

I'll try that on a real machine then.
 
Yes--programs such as Fastback 1 use direct hardware access to do their dirt. Worse, they employ CPU timing loops for operation. So a recovery of Fastback data means that you have to keep an 8088/86 box or a slow 286 around. Try it on your P1 system and it'll likely flop.

My guess with the original Fastback was done so that floppy and hard disk operation could be overlapped for better speed.
 
It works on a virtual box DR-DOS 6.0 installation on some degree, but I had a hard time with trying to extend the former 10M vhd drive to get PCTOOLS 9 installed for testing purpose.

But I think, despite FAT16 might support >32M until 2GB(?), DR-DOS 6 seems to have it's limit by =<32M, and furthermore it created the 10M Partition a FAT12, which isn't convertable into FAT16. I'm not sure, if the ID h06 was the wrong setting, but the partition was no longer accepted by DR-DOS 6 after copying the content into a ~70M FAT16 Partition (gparted of sysrescue CD 8.04 had issues to increase it to the full 490M (sorry, we're working on that ...)).

Nevertheless MS-DOS 6.22 had no issue and I could copy the data over to the new =<32M hard drive. MS-DOS fdisk, chkdsk, ndd or scandisk were all fine with the bigger HDD, also DR-DOS 6 fdisk. But format or HDD access was impossible. Also Norton ndd didn't recognize D: on DR-DOS.

So I guess it has either to do with the DR-DOS Kernel and partitions or HDDs above 32M or something with the partition type I used. I messed around with linux fdisk and gparted to achiebe my goals, though.

Today, I'll try PCBACKUP to restore the Backup from the greaseweazle created PCB 40,10,2,512csh floppy images. I'll report later. I keep in mind to try also some slow down TSR program or maybe pc86 emulator of a 286 AT or 8088 XT machine for avoiding timing issues, if necesary.
 
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