A few years ago, John Pezzano fromHewlett-Packard did a paper comparing native backup products. It is the best onethat I have seen, so I asked his permission to update it and includeit in this book. It is Table 3-5.
Table 3-5. Conversion of Native Utilities
Feature | tar | cpio | dump |
---|---|---|---|
Simplicity of invocation | Very simple (tar c | Needs find to specify filenames | Simple—few options |
Recovery from I/O errors | None—write your own utility | Resync option on HP-UX will cause some data loss | Automatically skips over bad section |
Back up special files | Later revisions | Yes | Yes |
Multivolume backup | Later revisions | Yes | Yes |
Back up across network | Using rsh only | Using rsh only | Yes |
Append files to backup | Yes (tar -r) | No | No |
Multiple independent backups on single tape | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Ease of listing files on the volume | Difficult—must search entire backup (tar -t) | Difficult—must search entire backup (cpio -it) | Simple—index at front (restore -t) |
Ease and speed of finding a particular file | Difficult—no wildcards, must search entire volume | Moderate—wildcards, must search entire volume | Interactive—very easy with commands like cd,ls |
Incremental backup | No | Must use find to locate new/modified files | Incremental of whole filesystem only, multiple levels |
List files as they are being backed up | tar cvf 2> | cpio -v 2> | Only after backup with restore -t> ( |
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