Very Computer

Hi folks,

Pardon my MacOS naivete.

I'm quite comfortable with Unix and plan to install Linux on a G3 (beige,
tower 300MHz MacOS 8.5 8G HD).  The Linuxppc installation process looks
fairly straight forward (and pretty well documented).  But i've got a
question on step-0: backing up my HD.

I've got plenty of pre-existing stuff on my HD that i'd like to retain
with out having to install them all over again.

Seems like i have two options:

1. Backup everything.  I'm pretty naive on this process under MacOS. I've
   got a zip drive and it looks like i'm currently consuming around 2G on my
   HD.  Can i back up everything on Zip disks? (Given their 100M capacity
   looks like i would need some 10--20 Zip disks??!)

   Is there a way i can backup across the net? I've got practically
   unlimited Unix disk space at work.  Any way to backup my Mac file system
   to Unix? Will a simple tar/ftp work? Suggestions for commercial or
   shareware tools?

2. Get another HD.  I'v no problem with this except that i'm not familiar
   with the reputation of any of the internal HD makers.  shopper.com gave
   me some info: a 4.30GB Eide Ultra-ATA/66 3.5LP 9.5MS 5400RPM Caviar by
   Western Digital is going from $90--110.  Any good?  Any other
   recommendations?

Given that i have 8G of HD already i'd prefer something along option #1.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Raja

Quote:>   Is there a way i can backup across the net? I've got practically
>   unlimited Unix disk space at work.  Any way to backup my Mac file system
>   to Unix? Will a simple tar/ftp work? Suggestions for commercial or
>   shareware tools?

Commercial:

a) Dantz Retrospect (www.dantz.com), will backup anything to anything
else using any carrier in between :)
b) use StuffIt (www.aladdinsys.com) to compress your HD into one big
archive locally and then transfer it using FTP

I don't know if there is a tar available for Mac that takes resource
forks into account (Mac files consist most of the time of a resource and
a data fork, bundled together by the HFS/HFS+ filesystem).

Jonas

name to mail me directly)

WD drives don't have the best rep, but should work fine. While you can't use a
slave drive on the Mac side, you can setup the drive as slave and use it
exclusively for Linux. You would need to change the jumper on your Mac drive to
indicate Master with Slave and set the new drive to Slave. Then, using PDisk,
setup the partitions appropriately for the Linux install. You can create a new
partition table on that drive (Command 'i' in PDisk), eliminating the Apple
Driver partitions since Linux doesn't need them and you're not going to use it
on your MacOS side anyway.

Good luck!

Tony