On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 08:24:01PM EST, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: > On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 07:45:21PM -0500, cga2000 wrote: > > Maybe this will turn out to be the brain-deadest question of the year, > > but I'll risk it .. > > > > Is there any way I can just write to a CD-R .. until it "fills up" .. > > stick in another CD-R .. etc. using something like dd ..? And read the > > data back to my HD using the same "stream of bits" strategy .. as if it > > were a tape..? > > > > cdbackup is the only one I know about.
I'll take a look. > Please read the fine print first. In effect, all CDs have a format on > them so if you use cdbackup you have to use cdrestore to get it. Its > not as portable as using tar. > Personally, I backup to tar.bz2 files on my /var/local/backup then split > it to match the size of the media I'm backing up to. using the good old "split" utility ..? > Either way, you need free space on a drive equal double ..? if you need to mkisofs the archive, no..? > to the size of your backup. CDs were never meant to replace streaming > tape drives or portable hard drives. Yeah, I can believe that .. :-) > How big is your backup set, IOW, how many CDs in a set will you want to > make? Well, as I mentioned elsewhere, I'm currently trying to shrink my entire system so that a full backup after compression would fit on one 700M CD. Not quite there yet but getting close. > Also, before you trust your data to CDs, know the limitations re > fragility, environmental requirements, and ageing. In theory this is certainly something to consider .. Tape rotation .. checking the manufacturer's recommendations as to the useful lifetime of the media.. how many passes it will tolerate before going south .. keeping "virgin" reference copies of backups that never see the light .. never mind a drive .. after they have been created and tested etc.. But while this makes sense in the enterprise world, here I'm talking about my little old laptop running nothing mission-critical and with no classified data whose loss might affect my -- or anyone else's well being .. Mailing Linst archives, my resumé, my personal docs & cheat sheets, and the config files that reflect all the sweat and aggravation that went into configuring the system the way I like it .. these are just about the only things I would be sorry to lose .. And in any case I have "manual" (and _tested_) copies of all the custom stuff in /etc .. /home .. /boot .. on CD already .. so if worse came to worse .. I know I could always reinstall something or other over the weekend and be back on my feet by the following Monday. Doesn't mean I'd not rather have a more serious backup/archive solution .. even if in terms of results it does not really make much difference with the way I've done it until now .. at least doing it the right way I might learn something useful. Considering how messy/inconvenient it is to run scheduled backups, it would not surprise me if less than a fraction of a percent of linux PC users did so on their homes machines. As to the other OS .. who knows .. one in a million ..? Thanks, cga -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
