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From: Lowell Gilbert <freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org>
Date: 27 Oct 2003 08:49:23 -0500
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Subject: Re: System Backup help.
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"Micheal Patterson" <micheal@tsgincorporated.com> writes:

> I realize that a lot of folks prefer dump / restore for system backups,
> however, to dump to tape, I would recommend using tar since that's what it
> does best. As long as the system sees the tape drive, tar -c / dumps
> everything to the tape drive.

The only problem with that is that you can't do a complete restore
from that and have a working system.  I use tar for backups, but
that's because I'm perfectly happy knowing I'll have to start with a
new-system install if I ever need to recover from a disaster.  

For serious systems, where getting the whole thing back up on a new
disk is critical, dump/restore will be *much* better.  This is mostly
because of tar's limitations; it doesn't restore the filesystem
itself, it doesn't handle device files, fifos, and I don't think it
has any clue about sparse files.