Hello! I would like to backup my system; I have DOS, Windows 98 and Linux installed; my hard disk is 10 GB large. As backup devices I only have an HP IDE CD recorder. I have tried in many ways to backup my entire system; but nothing works: in DOS pkzip, rar, lha and arj don't compress all the files because they are too many (in my DOS partition there are more than 10000 files); in Windows the problem is the same; Linux is the only OS I could back up. What do you suggest? Is it better physical hard disk backup or a backup with compression utilities? Is there a physical hard disk backup utility which can burn the entire backup directly into CDs? I don't have a second hard disk. And I wouldn't like to delete files in order to have half of my hard disk free for a hard disk image built for example by Norton Ghost. Thank you

For DOS and Windows, this is what I do, and it works quite well: Instead of backing up everything, I only backup the irreplaceble things (stuff that I have created) and the really difficult to replace items (software I don't have the original installation disks for, or I forgot where I got it). To start out, I use attrib -a /s, just after the first installation. Then I go to directories that I want to back up, and attrib +a /s. As files are newly created or modified, their archive attribute is set and when every few months, I backup the modified or new files using xcopy/s/m (this will only copy the files with the archive attribute set and reset the attribute when the file is copied) to a temporay directory. Then I put this directory on a CD. If your backups are too big using this method, all you should have to do is backup more frequently, or use more than one CD. Since CD's are cheap, and because I like reduncancy, this works fine for me....

nti makes a program to back up a hard drive and burn it directly to cd. (spans) Oh my! Is it slow! But faster than reinstalling should a system faiure acure. Functionality · Step-By-Step Interface · Tip wizard · Create shortcuts upon installation · Familiar Windows Explorer-type interface · Auto speed control for write optimization Backup · Backup entire image/partition to CD-R/RW or hard drive · Backup individual files/folders to CD-R/RW or hard drive · Backup in use system files and hidden files · Backup files from a remote location · Incremental or differential backup · On-the-fly compression · Low, medium, or high compression · Automatically compare after backup · Append or overwrite backup jobs · Supports multi-disc backup (spans CDs) Restore · Restore entire image from CD-R/RW or hard drive · Restore single file or folder · Restore from Windows or DOS command line · Reboot and restore in single step · Create a bootable CD to restore from Utilities · File level scheduler, once, daily, weekly, or monthly · Exclude files by extension or file spec, including wildcards · Complete backup and restore reporting · Optional password protection for backups · CD-R/RW erase Hope this helps. World Library