[geeks] windows backup software

[Shannon]

On 21-Mar-2013 22:47, Mouse wrote:

> No, I don't think this is an irrelevant quibble.  Multiple processes is
> one of the easiest ways to use multiple cores; what's more, it does so
> completely transparently.  "Do one thing well" advocates for splitting
> the backup functionality apart from compression, encryption, writing to
> media, etc - and, happily, so do using multiple cores and easily using
> encryption and/or compression algorithms not built in to your backup
> program (possibly because they didn't yet exist when it was written).

Sure, that's great... and like I said, they don't do it.

And I agree with the "do one thing well" philosophy. However, you seem
to think that can only be done if you write separate programs, and
that's not true.

Remember too that in Windows, programs general do not use pipes, they
provide "tools" via other methods like COM objects, and they can do that
without being split into separate programs.

Technically so can UNIX programs, but most people don't write them that way.

Since this is a commercial, home user Windows backup program, I don't
see the company (Acronis) seeing much benefit in the approach you advocate.

They can get most of that monolithic in Windows, and probably they
rather avoid the potential support nightmare of writing their program to
act as a tool for others.

NOTE: I'm not advocating this approach, just pointing out that in the
Windows world is just generally "the way".

> On the other side of the balance, I see no benefit whatever to keeping
> it all in a single program, making me wonder why anyone would do that,
> save perhaps lack of imagination.  (Or, I suppose, an OS that doesn't
> support anything pipelike...but I can't really believe that's true of
> even Windows any longer.)

See above, its just not how most Windows applications are written.

Server apps do use networking and split functionality, but that isn't
what this is.

In any case, my point is the program would run faster if it did the
compression multicore and it doesn't.

How they do it... honestly I don't care as long as they do a good job.
This is just a simple backup, not a tool for me.

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