This is a letter written to someone who thought this was a different kind of program. This is included so other users will not have to make the same mistake.
Dear Mr. xxx,
Thank you for your note of March 18. My apologies to you for the time you spent figuring out that my program does not do something that it is in fact not designed to do. You are the second person to send this sort of letter. I really should add a paragraph to the documentation making this clear.
My program does not, in fact, handle a multiple disk backup set. Since I create a Finder-readable backup with full folder structure and check backup dates of possible pre-existing copies before copying, I have to have the entire set of backup files online at all times. Otherwise, you would have to do a lot of disk swapping during the copy process. I could extend the program to handle two disk backup sets for people with an external floppy, but since I don't have one and since it would really be only a small improvement, I have not attempted to do so. Note also that I do not write to non-file structured devices such as tape.
It seems to me that DiskFit, from Supermac, does more or less what you want: It will maintain a multiple disk backup set without superfluous copies. It has, however, several disadvantages compared to Newer. In fact, it was my frustrations with DiskFit (and the lack of anything better on the market for my particular needs) which led me to write Newer. DiskFit is less flexible in letting you exclude files/folders from the backup process, it does not maintain your full folder structure on the backup disks (although they are Finder-readable which is more than I can say for some backup programs), and if it sees that you have deleted a file, it will delete the backup of the file from the backup disks (not so great if you think of your backups as an archive!).
Aside from its more obscure "Folder Merge" features which are more directed to my use of the Mac as a programming environment, Newer has two possible roles in the Mac backup process:
1) If you have a "large" disk to back up to, a Syquest or Bernouli cartridge for example, or a server disk mounted over a Tops or AppleShare network, Newer provides a very quick, finder readable, customizable backup. Your first backup may not be exactly instant, but after that, Newer looks only at the files modified since the previous backup and only copies them to the backup disk if they meet the name, folder and file type criteria you have specified. No other backup program gives you the flexibility provided by Newer and few others give you a finder readable backup.
2) If you must use floppies to do your backups, I think of my program as a complement to a massive, idiot proof, backup program like DiskFit. You can use DiskFit to make monthly complete backups of your disk to multiple floppies (or to streaming tape or another hard disk ...) and make weekly or daily incremental backups using Newer. Since Newer lets you use the modified date of another file as the cutoff date for files to be backed up, you could use the control file written by DiskFit as a timestamp to back up all files changed since the last DiskFit backup.
I use Newer at work over a Tops network and at home I use it to back up to an Ehman Syquest 45mb cartridge. In both cases, I also keep my "daily" incremental backups on floppies. Prior to my recent acquisition of the Syquest disk, my backup procedure at home was to run Newer every day or so to backup my active files to a floppy. When the floppy got close to full, I would put it away and start with a new blank disk. Around the first of every month, if I have not recently retired a disk, I made a copy of the current backup disk and put the copy away. This way, I had copies of old versions of files salted away and I had all my currently active files on one backup disk. The purpose here is to have just the active, recently changed files on a medium which is easy to store or archive. In addition, the process of creating the backup at the end of the day should be quick and easy. The process described here usually took less than a minute.
This procedure assumes, of course, that your "active" files will fit on one floppy disk and that you back up often enough that the total files changed since the timestamp will fit on one floppy.
