Aqua-Soft Forumsis it safe to back up mac files to FAT32 or Ext3 drives? im planning on formating my mac (yea, the dual-boot thing), but i want to back up my home directory, etc and dont want to risk corrupting or losing any files
any advice?
Backing Up Mac Files
First, are you running Panther? I ask cause Panther just seems to play more nicely than Jag.
Second, you shouldn't have too many problems, I have some shares on the Mac w/ the PC and yes, my Home directory is one of them.
I wouldn't do "mac" system files, just your normal files like mp3, jpg, bmp, txt, doc etc, you know what I mean. Mac system files (for me at least) become buggy or unreadable once being transfered back to the Mac. Given I've only done that once. . .once.
If your data is that important, take it serious and be safe ya know? Mac to Mac crap, Win to Win crap.
Maaaan, nothing's worse than losing your important data. It takes one hard lesson to make you over protective. Regular files, nooo problem man. Have fun!!
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! Need any help just PM!
Non-mac File Systems can't handle resource forks, and you don't want to lose those in the transfer.
What you want to do is compress them first. I wrote this whole big post on it a while back.
yes, im using panther
the reason i wanted to back up my home directory and apps because it would be easier than reinstalling most of them and saves my bookmarks and preferences
ill see if maybe i can get one of my mac friends to let me backup to one of their drives...
contra, will compressing to a zip or sit file save the resource forks?
You might not even have to compress them that much. if you have the space available you can just have your archiver store them with out compression.
Apple has a nice archiver that comes with Panther. Just "control"+click on a folder or file, and choose Make archive of "%file or foder name%"
Use a DVD, thats what I did before to back up all my files. If you don't have a DVD burner, you can use the .mac backup application, CD's, or make a partition in your harddrive and copy all your files there. 
Originally posted by nrzero+Dec 21 2003, 05:59 PM-->QUOTE(nrzero @ Dec 21 2003, 05:59 PM)Use a DVD, thats what I did before to back up all my files. If you don't have a DVD burner, you can use the .mac backup application, CD'syea, i dont have a DVD burner or .mac (but its starting to sound good).......... and 15GB is a lot of cds....like 30