Could Linux copy data to a CD-RW and not have any problems with Windoze reading it?

Second question on this topic: Does anyone know a good backup program that doesn't obliterate the original time stamps on files? If I copy a file created on 10 December 2005 from the HD to a CD-RW right now, I want the CD-RW's copy of the file to have the same date as the original.

a) Yes, definitely. In my experience, CD's I've burned on Linux are 100% compatible with Windows ... regardless of how I've burned them; either data or music CDs.

b) My Suse Linux (and corresponding KDE desktop) defaults to K3b (http://www.k3b.org).
I'm perfectly happy with it ... although I'm sure you can find other alternatives.

c) I don't recall ever having any problems with the copy program replacing the time/date stamp on the original file with "date copied" (although I could be mistaken). In any case, one solution might be to write your backup to a Zip file, and then burning the .Zip file to CD.

'Hope that helps .. PSM

a) Make sure that you select Joliet when you create the CD. I think this is to do with the way that Windows stores the file names.

b) Using the command line (K3B and all the other GUI programs are front-ends to command line tools), the mkisofs program shouldn't alter the time-stamps. However, another way of doing this is to use the tar program to zip the files you are backing up, create an iso image using mkisofs, and then burn it using cdrecord.

file1, file2 and file3 are the files or directories that you want to backup.


Assuming that your cd burner is /dev/hdd, and you have a 2.6 series kernel:
There is more info about cd burning using the command line Here (About 1/2 way down the page). Also on This Page is a shell script that I wrote to take care of this automatically.

I hope this helps
--Ian