Using the "System Backup" option under YaST2, several problems became apparent. The archive created was 7 GB in size. It could not be viewed as Konqueror complained that the archive could not be found. Running system restore under YaST2 was also a slow and painful process. For the moment, and this could be down to inexperience, this does not seem to be a useful strategy. As an alternative, "rsync" is being tested as a number of users on this list have mentioned and recommended it. A Iomega firewire drive with a capacity of 20GB will be used as the backup device. The format of the command used to backup the home directory is "rsync -av / home /media/firewire_ext2/home". Similar commands are used to backup data stored on an external usb2 drive, /etc directory, /boot directory, /opt directory. The compression option is not being used as the experience so far has not been good. The PC specification and use is: - AMD 2.6GZ Athlon XP with 512 MB ram and 60 GB drive - Dual boot SuSE 9 and Dark Side XP (which is very rarely used) - Two external hard drivers, a 60GB usb2 and 20GB firewire - The PC is used as a small server connected with three other computers, with Apache used as a proxy server to share a broadband connection - Two network adapters are used, one is a 10/100 Realtek Card connected to a wired lan while the other is a Netgear MA101 usb wireless adapter connected to a wireless ADSL modem Any advice in this respect will be appreciated. The particular areas comments would be welcome on are : - Is this a good strategy? - What directories should be backed up? - Is there any way to replicate what YaST2 system restore does to backup installed packages and other data? - A better alternative? If there are others, please feel free to comment. TIA. LW999