Dangerous to back up too much?

[Jim Gottlieb]

Usually when I do a backup, I go for it all.  Everything gets recorded
onto the tape.  But now I'm wondering if that might not be the best of
actions.

Let's take the case of a hard drive going bad.  Likely the new disk
will not be identical to the old (it'll be bigger!).  So files like
/etc/partitions could do harm if restored.  Likewise, some of the boot
files could be dangerous if the full backup were restored onto a
machine of a different type.

I don't think I can rely on just omitting the '-u' option to 'cpio -i',
since some of these files have bogus dates on them (Apr 13 1990 on ISC
2.2).

Is it best to be selective of what I back up?  Here's what I figure I
should back up from the root filesystem.  Advice is welcome.

/etc/conf
/etc/passwd
/etc/shadow
/etc/hosts
/etc/dumpsave	('cause I modified it)
/etc/profile
/unix
/etc/inittab
/etc/default
/dev
/etc/init.d
/etc/rc0.d
/etc/rc2.d
/etc/rc3.d
/bin
/lib


I also find it a good idea to keep a copy of my /etc/conf hierarchy on
floppies so that I can get a new kernel with tape (and anything else
out of the norm) support quickly built after loading into a new
machine or new disk.