On Tue, Aug 21, 2001 at 06:52:40PM +0200, Alexander Klein wrote:

> Is it possible to use a CD-RW drive for backup purposes without any
> major trouble?

you still run into the problem that writing CDRs or CDRWs needs a
temporary staging area to create a disk or session image before being
burned to the CD.  you can't just treat the CD as a generic block device
and tar or dump to it.

older tape drives (still in good condition) can be found cheaply.  I
paid $50 for a brand new DDS1 DAT (2GB uncompressed) a couple years ago.

of course if you are intending to archive rather than run periodic
backups, CD would be a good choice since it is readable almost
everywhere.

-- 
  Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@poofygoof.com