I want to start to use Linux to backup my Win98 and OS/2 systems (which are on a different hard drive on the same computer using OS/2 bootmanager). I want to do this for two reasons: (a) no locked files since the Win98/OS2 systems will be inactive when Linux is running, and (b) my backup device, a PD650MB rewritable optical drive on ultra scsi is 10-20x faster under Linux (!!!!). I plan to use tar with compression (also much faster than anything in Win98 or OS2 commercially available). Here is my question: if I backup every file using tar on my Win98 and OS/2 partitions and then delete and recreate these partitions (see my other post as to why I am doing this -- linux's fdisk mangled my partition table), will I be able to restore successfully using to following procedure: (a) tar everything to my PD, (b) shutdown linux and boot to my a: drive OS/2 boot disks, (c) run os2 fdisk to delete and recreate the bootmanager partition and the os/2 partitions, (d) boot to my a: drive Windows boot disks to recreate the windows partition, and then run fdisk /MBR to restore the boot loader for windows, (e) boot back to linux a untar everything to windows partition, (f) boot to my os/2 boot disks, and using the OS/2 tar (gnu) program, untar everything to the appropriate OS/2 partitions. Will that work??? I am especially concerned about the extended attributes in OS/2; will that tar/untar procedure wipe out my EA's??? Is the OS/2 tar program fully compatible with Linux tar?? Similarly, for Win98, are there any hidden files or other considerations that would screw up my system using this procedure? Any help would be greatly appreciated as always. -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archive at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>