tar for "full" floppy backup?

[Jerry James Haumberger <jerryjh@imt.net>]

Hello everyone --

An old Slackware 3.0 manual suggests the following command with
tar for a full backup onto 3.5" floppy disks:

tar cvfbk /dev/fd0 1440 4 /

I've read that the "k" option is supposed to cause tar to prompt
for adding multiple disks as the archive exceeds the size of each
floppy disk, but I receive errors, and the backup stalls.

Does anyone know of a one-line command string for using tar
to backup all that's necessary (I realize that *everything*
doesn't have to be backed up, such as empty directories, etc.)?

And what would be the correct command using tar to restore this
backup?

Can the multiple floppy disk archive be gzipped during the tar
archive process -- or would this make it impossible to restore
the archive later?

Am I using the wrong utility to attempt floppy disk backups?

I only have about 9 MBs of material (from BasicLinux) to
back up and am using a full version of tar from Slackware 3.5,
and I'm not working with a network here.

Please excuse my ignorance, and thanks for any suggestions!


-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs