backups on cd

[Cheryl Homiak]

First, thanks for the office-max tip, although the rebate was only for about a
week and is over; but there may be more down the road.
To anybody trying to register at office max, I wasn't able to do this after my
cart was full from the loggin/register link there; I just kep getting dumped
back to the register/login screen. But starting from the home directory without
shopping first, I was able to register. So if you try it and have problems, be
persistent; it can be done.
Last night, following the directions in the cdwriting howto and using mkisofs
and cdrecord, I did my first data cd. For practice, I just did my /home/chomiak
directory without any compression or anything, and it worked.
If any of you do your entire backup system by cd, I would like to know what you
use, how much compressing you do first, etc. Of course, I am also looking at the
backup howto, but would appreciate any tips from personal experience.
The only thing is that since you can't rewrite just part of a cdrom, it would
seem to me that you would do one more-or-less permanent backup that you might
redo from time to time, and then do periodic backups of the things that change
frequently.
I would really like to avoid having to do a from-scratch re-install in the
future, losing data and present setup. But I also want to be able to recover
specific files in case of a partial or minor disaster.
tIA.