[ale] Organizing large files on small media

[Chuck Huber]

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> Thompson Freeman wrote:
>> Q: Is there a general tool suitable for organizing a group  
>> of large files on relatively small media. That is small  
>> relative to the total storage needs, not the individual  
>> files.
...
>> The "challenge" is getting the files packed somewhat  
>> efficiently onto the various DVDs under program control, as  
>> keeping track of what is where and when is more pain than  
>> I'm interested in.

Typically I use dar for such tasks.  It doesn't organize the files
largest first.  However it does produce a catalog to extract files one
at a time without having to reassemble all components into a single
file.  You can restore file X and it'll tell you which media to insert
first unlike tar which needs to read everything in front of the desired
file.  It also does file-by-file compression as it builds the archive,
again so you don't have to decompress the entire archive to read one file.

I use it around here for backups.  For remote backups, I take the .dar
file and gpg it before transport.

Check out http://dar.linux.free.fr/

Enjoy,
    - Chuck

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