There are many reasons why data may be lost. You may suffer a hard disk failure, have your computer stolen, or delete the files yourself! Whatever the reason, invest some time in regularly using backup software to protect your files, whatever the circumstances of the data loss.
You'll often see the terms archiving and backup come up in discussions. The only difference between the two is that with archiving you are moving files onto another media (e.g. CD, DVD, magnetic tape), whereas with a backup, the files are copied.
All Linux distributions come with the tar command. This is a console program that allows you to save and restore files to and from archive media. Although tar is a very useful program, it does not provide all the functionality that users and administrators need. Here steps in the software in this category.
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With backup software you want reliable software that has reached maturity. Consequently, we can only recommend software that has been tried and tested. Amanda fits the bill; it has a large feature set and has been developed by the University of Maryland since 1991. For backing up to CD or DVD, give dar a try.
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