system backup

[Robert Brockway]

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004, Lennart Sorensen wrote:

> Well I have tob for managing that part of backups.  I decided afio was a
> nice archive format for backups, since it compresses each file inside
> the archive, rather than applying compression to the archive after
> making it.  This way seeking to a given file is fast, since it doesn't
> have to decompress the file to seek, only the wanted file data.  On tape

One other advantage that "compress then archive" has over "archive then
compress" is to do with a corrupt file.  If you archive then compress, a
corruption anywhere in the file pretty much toasts the file.  If you
compress then archive the fault tolerance is much higher.

This comes at a price of course - better compression is normally obtained
when doing archiving then compression.

Zip is notable as a tool which compresses then archives.

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert-5LEc/6Zm6xCUd8a0hrldnti2O/JbrIOy at public.gmane.org, rbrockway-cFo9iiqjkw8eIZ0/mPfg9Q at public.gmane.org
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