[ramp]

If you have access to a remote tape server on another linux/unix machine then you can use hfspax to backup your OS X HFS/+ partitions to this tape drive. Here's how.

-- download and install hfspax from versiontracker.com

Your local machine has address local.machine and your remote machine is remote.machine. You will need to have ssh installed on both machines and need to have the command 'dd' available on the remote machine. Also the remote machine has a working tape device at /dev/nst0.

To backup:
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hfspax -w -x cpio files_to_backup | ssh -l user remote.machine "dd of=/dev/nst0 obs=10240"

To restore:
---------------
ssh -l user remote.machine "dd if=/dev/nst0 ibs=10240" | hfspax -r

The 'hfspax' package has some excellent backup instructions. Granted it's not retrospect but in my tests so far it has worked for me. I will try a full restore and see how that goes.

[macmicke]

How does it handle resource forks and data forks. In other words. Those files that gets messed up in *nix enviroment that are OS 9 files....

[ramp]

The latest version of hfspax seems to have fixed these. Download it and read the very exhaustive documentation contained in Readme.rtf.

In my tests thus far it looks OK. Maybe sometime later I will try full exhaustive tests.

- Ram