What are the pros and cons of various backup options?

[Earl H. Kinmonth]

In article <751 at lilink.UUCP> upaya!tbetz at lilink.UUCP (Tom Betz) writes:
>Please forgive me if this question has been done to death, but:
>
>Anyone and everyone who cares to answer - what is YOUR favorite 
>backup tool?

I use tar to backup user files (essentially equal to my own files)
because I also have tar under msdos (I wrote it).  If I've had a real
disaster with Xenix (so far, always of my own making), I can get access
to my data files under msdos, either using them on a PeeCee or uploading
the disks to a UNIX mainframe, while I rebuilt Xenix "at my leisure."

The tar I use has a few features that make it more useful for backup
than the genric variety (above and beyond the ability to run under msdos
and write msdos disks).  These include alphabetized directories, protected
multi-generation output, etc.

(This version of tar is available from me as source code and msdos
executable.  The source code is known to compile under SCO Xenix 286,
Ultrix, 4.3 BSD, Sun Unix, and Turbo C.  It has NOT been tested with
tape.  If anyone would like to give me a tape drive so I could test it,
don't just sit there!)

Earl H. Kinmonth
History Department
University of California, Davis
916-752-1636 (voice, fax [2300-0800 PDT])
916-752-0776 secretary

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