At 12:08 PM 99-10-06 , you wrote:
>BIG question !!??
>I have a Ditto 2Gig backup system. I've found out It's less then useless,
>if you crash the HD and have to reformat.
>It seems the catalog info for the backup tapes are kept on the HD.
>You lose the software in reformat, you lose the catalog #, and have what
>appears to be a blank tape, after reloading the Ditto software.

Are you sure the catalog is not retrievable from the tape? All of the tape
drives I've used(including Dittos 2GB) stored the catalog on Hard Drive(for
easy referencing) and on Tape. In the included software, you should have
an option to retrieve the catalog from the tape.

>Now the BIG question..
>I want to upgrade to a CD-rewriteable drive.
>Does RW cds have the catalog # or at least info to use them after
>software reload???
>Read only CDs I imagine would since it's permanent.
>Thank you,
>Geo.

There are many methods of backing-up, you can use DirectCD, a program
that makes the CD-R(W) seem like a large 500MB(CD-RW) or 650 MB(CDR)
floppy drive. Then you can just copy the files you want backed up to CD and
retrieving them is as simple as copy them back and remove the Read-Only
attribute. CDR created with DirectCD can only be read with a CD-R(W) drive,
until they are closed. CD-RWs can be read with any MultiRead-compatible
CD-ROM drive(usually 32X and faster) and a UDF reader. This program(or
a similar one) is included with all CD-RW drives that I have seen
available in a kit.

Also included in a kit should be mastering software, like Adaptec Easy-CD
Creator 3.5 or 4, with 3.5 being the more likely version -- 4 was just
released. Mastering software lets you take files and burn them to a
standard format that most systems can read. The limit here, I'd say
is older CD-ROM drives. They don't read CD-Rs or -RWs very well.

Last is a separate product like Backup Exec. It is similar to the tape backup
software you received with you Ditto, and lets you do much the same thing,
only to CD-R/RW. In this case, as in tape, the catalog should be stored on
CDR and Hard Drive, just like your Ditto.

I hope this helps(at least a little :)

Jamie Furtner
-- Jamie Furtner [log in to unmask]

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