Cross-Platform Backup Software

[Christopher Browne]

On 10/3/07, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> afio is actually nice in that it can gzip the files individually, while
> keeping the header for each file in the archive uncompressed, which
> allows much faster seeks and restores of individual files in an archive.
> Anything that uses gzip or bzip2 after creating the archive requires
> decompressing the whole thing to get at any file in the archive.  it is
> really just a much better cpio.

There is a further benefit, namely that it is specifically designed to
be "resyncable."  Tapes have a history of sometimes permitting blocks
to drop out.

If the entire file is compressed as a whole, there's in effect a
"cipher feedback loop" such that if it breaks at any point, the
remainder is essentially destroyed.

In contrast, afio "resyncs" after each file, so that if a portion gets
dropped, you can still hope to recover the remainder, perhaps only
losing one file.

If I were designing a backup system, I'd be *very* inclined to use afio...
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