I have been looking for a backup solution for my Suse 10 machine. I found Arkeia Smart Backup which offered a free version for people who don't need to backup more than 50GB. Everything seemed fine until I investigated what would happen in a disaster. (HD failure) I uninstalled Arkeia and reinstalled it. ArkeiaSB will recognize that the backup tapes are produced by ARkeia, but won't let you use them to restore. Every backup program I have ever used allowed you to rebuild the directory or whatever from the tape. It seems kind of dumb to back up my data and not be able to retrieve it if I have a HD crash. Any suggestions?

let me guess, only the paid version will let you actually restore the back up? great idea.

did you have a look at good old TAR? its tested, its free as in beer, well documented and already installed by default on your box http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/tar.html

I have used TAR and it works OK, but hey if I can find something with a GUI and that will let you schedule backups..........

Linuxlimbo,
I am intrigued to know more about your experience with Arkeia. I am aware of the free license for under 50G of data. What I am truly seeking is a backup program that will copy images/files to DVD media. I can't tell from the Arkeia site if their program supports DVDs. What are you backing up to? Tape, another hard drive, DVD or CD?

I've only used an earlier version of Arkeia (v4), so this may not apply. There is a command line tool (readarkeia) which would allow you to read the tape (and the directory, I believe). The tool was similar to tar, but with fewer options.

I have successfully use it too!