What are the pros and cons of various backup options?

[Tom Betz]

Please forgive me if this question has been done to death, but:

I'm a relative novice sysadmin using SCO Xenix 2.3.1.  For the
last six months, I've been doing my backups using what SCO's
sysadmsh offered me, which was backup(C) via fsphoto.  The first
time I needed to restore my root filesystem, of course, restore(C)
barfed, and I started looking around.

I'm trying out 'tar cveA * > /dev/lp0' right now, which looks
promising... however I see that it's not complete (since /dev/*
and /usr/lib|cron/spool/FIFO are not "real" files or directories,
they aren't backed up... I could tolerate this, I suppose...) so
I'm wondering about the whole question.

Anyone and everyone who cares to answer - what is YOUR favorite 
backup tool?   What are the pros and cons of tar(C), cpio(C),
backup/restore(C), and of their various command line switches?

What slick, easy, and reliable backup tools are out there for
Xenix that I should have on my machine, that will make my life 
easier and more secure?

Reply by mail to the address in the signature, I'll summarize to
the net if there's interest.

Thanks.

-- 
"There are no magicians. There are no hidden     |  rutgers!lilink!upaya!tbetz
 people or gurus somewhere in secret. You have   | Tom Betz, Greyston Foundation
 already been given the teaching by the greatest |       114 Woodworth Ave.
 illuminated sages born." - Gopi Krishna         |     Yonkers, NY 10701-2509