BKWNTBKR.RVW   980620

"Windows NT Backup and Restore", Jody Leber, 1998, 1-56592-272-7,
U$29.95/C$42.95
%A   Jody Leber jody@genorff.com
%C   103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA   95472
%D   1998
%G   1-56592-272-7
%I   O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
%O   U$29.95/C$42.95 800-998-9938 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com
%P   336 p.
%T   "Windows NT Backup and Restore"

It may be thought that backup is a relatively simple process.  Start
the backup program (hopefully remembering to stick a tape in the drive
first) and walk away.  In fact, there are a number of other factors to
be considered.

Chapter one looks at backup basics, and it was enough to point out
that the book was going to be rather limited in scope.  For one thing,
the material only looks at tape as a backup medium.  For another, the
emphasis does not seem to be on backing up of an NT workstation or
server itself, but the design of a backup system for a whole network. 
While this topic is certainly worthy of a book, it does mean that a
number of areas are not going to be addressed.  Chapter two mentions
some factors other than backup that can contribute to or impede system
availability, but not in useful detail.  A few special NT files and
directories are reviewed in chapter three.

The beginning of planning starts in chapter four with a number of
questions to ask.  Aside from eight pages of tables resulting from
some rather obvious calculations to do with transfer speeds, the
material is quite reasonable.  Chapter five adds to this some policy
issues to address.  The inquiries chapter six suggests making in
regard to backup software very quickly become trite, and start to miss
some areas of concern.  Moving into backup software itself, the tape
backup utility (ntbackup) included with NT is covered in chapter
seven.  Chapter eight looks at some commercial packages in fair
detail.  Unfortunately, the initial description of the products is
neither terribly clear nor consistently formatted.  The subsequent
comparison table is likely more helpful.

Chapter nine addresses tape drive and tape library hardware, spending
a lot of time on SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface)
considerations.  Testing is discussed in chapter ten, but mostly in
terms of what to test for, rather than advice on how to do it.  A
variety of implementation suggestions, on a variety of topics, are
made in chapter eleven, and this continues into chapter twelve.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998   BKWNTBKR.RVW   980620