Shel

Well, I figured that being I had read that the Tx won't lose any data even if the battery goes competely drained, I figured I didn't need to backup to a memory card.

I figured wrong.

Tonight, my TX reset itself. It's done this numerous times, but when it asked me what language I wanted to use, I had a bad feeling.

ALL of my data was gone!

I hotsynced from my computer when I returned home, and amazingly, everything I previously had on my TX was restored.

I did have to do a few things:
Reenter a Password.
Reenter password for Vindigo, before it would hotsync new news
Re setup Favorites
Play around with Addit, untl it would finally update info (not even sure what finally worked)

I've read posts from numerous people who say that when they try backupbuddy or some other backup program, their TX crashes.

Anyone know of a STABLE program to backup to memory card?

Do most of you backup to memory card, or do you figure if you ever have a major crash, you can always restore from your desktop/laptop?

Wondering what others do... thanks!

Juggle4Evr

Hi,

at the moment I only make backups on memory card because I still haven't figured out how to connect my TX to SuSE Linux 9.2. Before, it worked perfectly with my old T3 but the TX seems to be different.

I use BackupBuddyVFS Professional (http://www.bluenomad.com/bbvfs/prod_bbvfs_download.html) which seems to work quite well after a hard reset (even if it hangs after a restore but a soft reset fixes that). Before that I tried BackupBuddyVFS Personal but this doesn't allow you to select single files on Restore and that can lead to a hard reset loop after restoring. You can also have several sets of backup on the card so to select an older set if restoring "on the road" doesn't work with the last backup.

Greetings,
Juergen

AndyMac

I do backups to a card AND my desktop. The card allows me to have a current backup when away from my PC.

I use Resco Backup which allows me to perform backups on a very fliexible schedule. I do a new full backup every morning at 5am (which keeps the last 7 days) and I have it set up to do incremental backups every 4 hours.

With RescoBackup my card backup is almost always more current then my desktop backup.

Oh, and Resco backup hasn't cause me a single problem or crash on my TX. I have done full backups and tested restores. They work perfectly.

Shel

Thanks for the feedback, Andy

I'm testing out RescoBackup right now. I own BackupBuddy, but don't want to try it, having heard about soft reset loops that it has caused.

btaryag

In short, some backup programs are not written well and will crash while backing up. But any decent program (BackupBuddy, Card Backup, Resco Backup) will not be the cause of the crash.

It may crash anyway, and the reason for this (usually) is the following: Palm switched to flash memory so that info won't get lost if the battery dies. But flash memory is slower than ram. To resolve this problem, the Palm uses flash and ram. All data is kept in flash, but whenever a program is accessed it is temporarily copied to ram (to a place known as dbCache). It stays there until room is needed for another program. There are certain programs that run in the backgroud of the Palm (e.g. font changers) that are written poorly (or not written for this kind of system) and in order to work, they have to be in ram. But the Palm sometimes empties ram to make room for new programs. And the program has to be in ram. So the Palm crashes. This is one of the main causes of crashes that affects Palms today.

Having one of these programs is what causes the backup to crash. When a backup takes place, every file is temporarily moved to ram. Soon enough the Plam has to clear out the ram to allow more files in, in order for the those files to be backed up. So if one of these programs is in ram, a crash will happen.

If you don't have any of these problematic programs, the backups should not crash. I personally use Card Backup, and I find it to be a wonderful program.

WildCelt

RescoBackup is one of the few apps that has NOT caused a crash on my T|X. It works flawlessly, as I've had the displeasure of testing several times now (after spontaneous hard resets).

Zano2004

Yes, the TX does do hard resets spontaneously and what seems randomly.

__________________
Palm V, Vx, 505, 515, Sony NX70, Palm TC, T3,T5, Treo 650 & 680, Palm TX
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" - Thomas Jefferson

Shel

Whow. I've owned a LOT of Palm devices, from the Palm Pilot 1000 on up to the Clie NX, and none of them have ever hard reset spontaneously!

I was rather annoyed when I was out last Fri. night, launched Web app., and my Palm TX suddently reset, and asked me which language I'd like to use.

I've now purchased RescoBackup.

I had a problem with Web (would soft reset the TX every time I tried to launch) and called Palm. Well, the tech. support asked me to hard reset my TX, which gave me the opportunity to try out a restore from Resco.

Happy to say, the restore went off smoothly, with *everything* back the way it was prior to my hard reset.

Oh... and my Web app (Blazer) now launchs fine.

Still, it's a little hard to believe that after almost ten years, Palm comes out with a device that suddently soft (or hard) resets every now and then!