I tried backing up my boot partition with AmiBack
but when it finished copying over all the files
my backup drive partition was "not a DOS disk".

I can't believe that this is some sort of bug that
hasn't been noticed before. What could I be doing wrong?

Gary
(A4000 OS 3.9)

@GaryG

I would say that is normal if AmiBack created a disk backup. Does it have some DOS type like BACK or similar? Or NDOS:BACK?

Just to be clear, though it's stated as backup disk in title, did it corrupt the source partition or destination floppy?

If just the floppy you could try to copy it, just into memory, if you can to test it. Otherwise, see if AmiBack can scan over and verify the content.

@Hypex
Well, besides calling it "not a DOS disk" it doesn't show
up in Diskmaster or when typing '\nfo" from Shell.

Does it really contain m\y files in some compressed,
proprietary form?

@GaryG

How did you configure Amiback Settings for backup?

What version of AmiBack are you working with?

Do you have boing balls installed on 3.9?

What filesystems are you working with on source and destinations?

FYI, I used AmiBack for years but thanks to Piru from the MorphOS Team, he spend a good amount of time and found that a bug exists with Amiback that will cause it to crash sometimes. ( https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=13142&forum=9#153354 ).

I contacted the author who lost the source code, so the version .i on Aminet is as far as you go.

I will say it will work most times just fine in AmigaOS 3.x where MorphOS is alot more sensitive to the bad codes it will fail regularly after backup completes and where it writes the index.

I moved over to using BackUp 1.91 by Deniil (onyxsoft.se) as it works the best out of all the options (tried about 4 of them, there is a review over at Amibay I made years ago https://www.amibay.com/threads/review-amiga-backup-software-comparison.90475/).

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@Matt3k

My version is 2.0 and i'm using FFS.

Maybe I should just content myself with copying
over my boot partition to my backup disk (which
is larger anyway)

@GaryG

I don't know enough about the program you are using for backup.

But some of them are reading a hard disk, compressing the data and write the result as a stream onto a backup media. This media could be a tape, disk or a file (files are restricted in size) . In both ways they will not create a filesystem, your tape or your disk will not be readable without utilizing the program.

That's btw. one of the reasons why I stopped using Amiga Backup programs, I switched to tar ( GNU ) instead.

@OneTimer1

What is strange is that I have a large file on a backup HD
that is labelled an AmiBack file. It didn't invalidate thet partition

@GaryG

So…. Have you tried a restore?

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@GaryG

Quote:

GaryG wrote: @OneTimer1 What is strange is that I have a large file on a backup HD that is labelled an AmiBack file. It didn't invalidate thet partition

Maybe because you specified a file as target, and not a disk?

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@GaryG

Quote:

So…. Have you tried a restore?

Verify would be an option too.

@GaryG

I would still use AmiBack, as it is a really great program (minus the bug, but to be fair all of the other backup software has bugs somewhere to deal with).

When you go to Backup Configuration:
1. Select your source up top by clicking on the device.
2. Destination make AmigaDos File.
3. Type in the File name next to it where you want it to backup to.
4. Backup type can be complete or selective depending on what you want.
5. The other options like verify, compression, etc. go and choose them. Note that the configuration filter works great where you can specify files that do not have the archive bit set, ie files that have changed since the last backup.

That will work just fine for you.

If you want to update to .i you will need to modify the floppy (hopefully a copy). Then the install disk will be on the latest version.

Ok that will do it. Please refer to the manual for other setup items, but what I gave you above will work just fine.

@kolla

No, I've had no need to do a "restore" despite
the fact that my Seagate SCSI disk is 25 (!) years old

@GaryG

Yes it would. The files would be hidden. The disk format is customised. I've backed up files before with AmiBack Tools. I have a collection of floppies and the whole archive of compressed data is divided between the set of disks.

This is why it will show up as NDOS and not show up in DiskMaster or with Info. Without a recognised filesystem it won't mount it so it will be missing. But a signature like "BACK" is usually in boot block in the type place where DOS signature would usually be.

@OneTimer1

It was common to do this method in backup programs. It utilised the most space since compared to HDD medium floppy was small. But some programs did split up archives as files. DiskSalv could salvage files into one file file archive. Unfortunately, restoring from said archive was broken, but that's another story.

Did you ever use HDBackup from OS3.1? Using the BRU. By the looks of it that also uses a custom disk format. LhA was the most common. Did the Amiga tar port include Amiga protection bits?

@Hypex

No, I've never used HDBackup.

With the appearance of CD's (not to mention Jaz and ZIP drives) as well as inexpensive portable hard drives, there are other convenient backup options

@GaryG

Yes once I had a CD writer I stopped backing up to floppy and backed up to CDR. Without compressing it all into an archive. I used MakeCD and ended up getting lost with multi volume CD sessions. This caused all these icons to mount since the CD driver I used was confused. But it allowed incremental backup to CD without rewriting data. As long as you chose the right option between session and volume.