i assume the best way would be to use something like rsynch to copy each file to the backup device. i'd like to create an archive file instead. maybe a .tar. however, if the file gets corrupt, say it is a 120MB file, can i recover any of it or is it all lost? compressing the file might increase the danger, gz, bzip2. however, i remember there being a archive file format that had recovery features. what was it?

Tar creates a single archive. If part of it is corrupt, you risk loosing the entire archive. There is a utility called tarfix which may be able to repair corrupt archives in some cases.

I use Dar, which adds files individually to an archive. If one is corrupt, you loose only that one, not the entire archive. Dar also has a skip-ahead feature that can skip over the corrupt portion of some files. The tutorial doesn't say which type of files skip-ahead will work on.

In Kde, there is a GUI frontend called Kdar.

There is also a dar mailing list that you can post questions to and the author will eventually respond.

I've used Dar to make archives larger than 3 gig.

Your milage may vary.

Hi!

I've once answered a similar question that you may find useful:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=365347

Regards!