FastBack
FastBack is a software application developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s for backing up IBM PC and Macintosh computers. It was originally written by Fifth Generation Systems, a company located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When the company wanted to expand into the Apple market they purchased and rebranded a product from TouchStone Software Corporation.
FastBack Plus 1.0 for DOS, circa 1987. | |
| Original author(s) | Fifth Generation Systems |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1987 |
| Operating system | DOS, Windows, Mac OS |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Backup software |
| License | Proprietary |
The original FastBack was unique in the industry in that it was able to read from a computer hard drive and write to the floppy drive simultaneously using the full capability of the dual-channel DMA chip found in personal computers of that time. When combined with compression techniques and a proprietary disk format that stored 720KB of data on each 360KB 5ΒΌ-inch floppy disk (only in 1.2MB drives), this made FastBack one of the fastest PC backup programs at the time.