[geeks] windows backup software

[Mouse]

>>> Its 2013 and I find it amazing how many backup programs are stuck
>>> with 80s level interfaces, no support for multiple cores, [...]
>> What possible use could multiple cores be?  Unless it's truly
>> spectacularly badly designed, it will be I/O bound anyway, no?

> Even sticking to UNIX pipeline backups, I can saturate a single core
> with high enough compression and encryption levels,

That's hardly the backup program, though; that's the compression and/or
encryption program.  Of course, if that functionality is rolled into
the backup program, sure, but I'd say that counts as spectacularly bad
design, and not only for this reason.

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).

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.)

> In any case, most Windows backup software is GUI driven, multhreaded
> software, and almost always benefits from at least coarse multicore
> support.

More bad design, IMO.  The GUI should be separate from the backup
program: "do one thing well".  The GUI should be a GUI, running other
programs as it finds appropriate for what the user tells it to do.  It
should not be required; that's more bad design.  Once again, splitting
the parts apart is all upsides and no downsides as far as I can see.

Even if you drink the Windows philosophical koolaid and believe the
backup software should be a single-vendor thing with no flexibility to
use anything from some other vendor (or, worse, something
user-provided), the vendor can still benefit from being able to replace
pieces easily, or add pieces when the customer buys right-to-use new
compression algorithm $FOO...and most of the other benefits of
splitting things up apply.

So, in summary: yeah, a package of backup software plus ancillaries
like compression should use multiple cores usefully - but that comes
for free with decent design.

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