I also use my computer for tracking my investments and for doing all my various taxes, both personal and business. Obviously preservation of my data, including my own program source code, is essential to my continued financial well being.

My current computer, a Dell 500 Dimension, was originally configured with a 20gb fast hard drive and a Seagate 20gb (compressed) tape drive. This tape drive was 100% reliable, and saved me from disaster several times when some errant piece of Windows software decided to munch all or portions of my hard drive contents. However, after three years, the mechanism finally started getting flaky, and I was also tired of having to change tapes to do a full backup after exceeding the drive's maximum uncompressed capacity. So I started looking for a good alternative.

What I Did:
What I found was the OnStream ADR series of tape drives, specifically the USB-30 model. This drive uses ADR tapes, which were advertised as having a fantastically good error rate and extreme reliability. The drive itself was highly recommended by one of the major computer magazines. The tape capacity was 15 gb without compression, about 2 gigs more than I actually needed for what I have on my hard drive. So I bought it. I also bought three tapes and a cleaning cartridge - a very substantial investment, all told.

I installed the system and software, and it did indeed work. For two months I faithfully did a full backup weekly, followed by daily incremental backups. Never did I have a problem, and never did I need to restore anything, although I did try the restore function for a few hundred megabytes worth of files when I first installed the OnStream. It seemed to restore those files just fine.

Then one of the tapes started to give me problems. The software would keep telling me to insert a tape when I tried to write on it with a prior erase, even though it was in the drive, and showed in the "1Safe Express" window. I soon found that the tape would work if I took it out of the drive and let it cool, an indication that probably it was formatted on a drive that was slightly misaligned, and that my drive was perhaps becoming slightly misaligned also - in the opposite direction.

This brings us to last Saturday. Saturday night is when the full backup and compare operation is scheduled. My oldest tape is used. I gave the software the command to eject the tape it was holding. The OnStream drive made many load groaning noises, and the tape did not eject. I pressed the eject button on the drive. More noise, no ejection. Oh, Oh! Well, it's late, I'm tired, I'll figure it out in the morning....

And of course, at this exact moment, disaster struck. Sunday morning my hard drive stopped working. Now what? Well at least I have good tapes and can restore everything with little difficulty, even if I have to get another OnStream drive flown in... yeah, right!

After fixing the computer's hardware problem, I turned the computer back on. I loaded Win98SE from the install floppy and CD-ROM. Fortunately I had the foresight to previously copy the 1Safe tape install program to CD-R, since it was a new version. The old version on the CD sent with the drive was not compatible with tapes made with the new version. If I did not have the computer experience to recognize the danger of not having a usable install program, I would have been sunk right there.

Anyhow, I installed the drive and turned it on. This time the tape ejected. Whew! I put it back in, and loaded the USB drivers as Windows requested, and installed the 1Safe software from my own CD. Hey, now I'm ready to go! Uh huh.

I tried to eject the tape, so I could put the one with the latest backups in. Same deal - loud groans, no ejection. I finally got it out, and inserted the correct tape. Loud groans, and no mount. So I disconnected the drive, planning to send it and the tape to OnStream with instructions to put the tape contents on a new hard drive and send it to me. Then I realized that the drive had been cool this morning when it worked. So I waited a while, plugged it all back together, and tried again. This time the tape mounted. All right!

So, I started the 1Safe software, selected "restore now" and checked the boxes to select everything on the tape, including the Windows Registry. A few hours later, it said it was finished but was unable to restore the registry. Now what? So I exited the tape program, and the computer froze. I tried to reboot, and it would not.

More hours to reinstall Windows 98 and the tape software yet again. I checked directories on my three partitions and found that all the correct filenames had been restored from the tape, but no contents! Every file had zero bytes, including the windows files that the re-reinstalling of Windows had not replaced. Now what?

This time I proceeded more slowly. I instructed 1Safe to restore just my D and E partitions and replace all existing files. This finally completed, but seemed about 2 gigabytes short to me.

Next was to again try to restore the C drive and registry. I selected these options in 1Safe and started the process. Eventually an "in use" file was encountered, and I selected the option to have it restored on next reboot, plus the option to treat all similar files encountered in the same manner. Drive C was apparently restored satisfactorily, including the registry. I rebooted the computer. A period of "updating system files" ensued, which I presume was the previously "in use" files being replaced from some temporary storage location where 1Safe had placed them.

My familiar customized Windows background picture finally appeared, followed by all the icons for my software. Wow! I'm finally back in business! Don't count on it....

I started up some of my usual programs. Most seemed to work, but I ran across some that said "E:\program files\xxxxx.exe" is not a WIN32 program. When I used Windows Explorer to check those files, they had zero bytes!

I used the Windows "Find...Files and Folders" function to find files with 1k or fewer bytes (it won't allow finding files with zero bytes.) There were thousands. The 1Safe restore process had again restored file names only on a large number of entire subfolder contents on the E partition. I brought up the 1Safe program, selected "restore now" once again. and selected each of those subdirectories that I had found with the Find function. I then ran that restore operation. The total of bytes was 2.3 gig, just about what I had thought was missing when I did the full partitions restore.

Now, at last, everything seems to be fully restored. Of course, it is now 3 pm on TUESDAY! With my Seagate system, I would have been finished Sunday afternoon.

OnStream - your system is not ready for prime time. The hardware seems to have little longevity, and one third of my tapes are flaky already after only about 10 weeks. On the plus side, it does seem to back up everything OK, but that is not a compliment - it is supposed to do that. However the software errs badly on the restore. Fortunately I have finally found a decent backup alternative with ITS Systems software and a second hard drive. If you ever decide to answer my emailed complaints (other than the receipt acknowledgement), be advised that I will be happy to let you have the whole works back in exchange for a refund.

UPDATES:

12/16/2002: Finally, an answer from OnStream -- six months late.

12/26/2002: OnStream has offered to exchange the tape drive for another (probably after learning of this web page.) No thanks, OnStream.

01/13/2003: They have promised to send a refund check.

01/21/2003: Check received! If only it hadn't taken months and a web page to accomplish....