Backing up to a Mac drive

[motorollin]

I've turned on Windows File Sharing on my iBook so I can use smbfs on my Amiga to mount a volume which connects to a shared folder on the iBook. I want to use this to back up my Amiga, but I'm worried about just dragging the files over. Will I lose any file attributes if I just copy them into a directory on the Mac? Will they work the same if I copy them back on to the Amiga?

Thanks for any advice.

--
moto

[JLF65]

The best way to avoid losing names and attributes is to arc the files first, then copy them over. If you need them again, they'll unarc with all the proper names, paths, and attributes all intact... if you make your arc right.  :-)

[TheWizard]

Pretty damn cool idea!  :-)

I usually have no trouble copying files from PC->Amiga and PC->Mac unarchived. It follows that the binary structure of an Amiga file, which is not adversely affected on a PC, will not be adversely affected on a Mac with OS X, that does not usually harm files generated on a PC.

The Wizard

[motorollin]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I had thought of archiving the files first. I use AnArchiver to create an LHA archive of my OS3.9: partition, and copied it over to the Mac. Unfortunately when I tried to unarchive the file I got errors (can't remember what they were - CRC errors I think). I tried creating the archive again but the same thing happened.

I'm not 100% comfortable copying files directly to the Mac share as I have had problems with file becoming read only when copying this back to the Amiga. Not a massive problem, just very inconvenient.

Suggestions for a good, reliable, archiver would be much appreciated.

Thanks

--
moto

[bloodline]

motorollin wrote:

Suggestions for a good, reliable, archiver would be much appreciated.

Zip is probably your best bet, as it's supported on all platforms.

[motorollin]

I don't really mind what format the archive is in, as WinRAR on Windows supports most archives (including Zip and LHa), and MacOS supports most archive formats natively. So really I just need a good reliable archiving application (with a progress bar - I'm impatient :-) )

I've heard Peperoni is good, so I'm going to try it tonight. Any other suggestions for better progs would be appreciated!

--
moto

[Thomas]

Zip is probably your best bet, as it's supported on all platforms

ZIP does not preserve the Amiga file attributes. As preserving the file attributes is the main reason for using an archiver, it is no very wise to use ZIP.

Unfortunately when I tried to unarchive the file I got errors

This is probably because you use the buggy LhA 2.2 from Aminet. Try 2.11 instead. http://people.freenet.de/aclogic/lha.html

You should test the archive before you copy it to the network drive and again after you copied it, just to see if it is the network which causes the errors.

Bye,
Thomas

[JLF65]

Another possible source of corruption is that during the copy to the Mac (or back) it doesn't think the archive is a binary file. Most transfer methods with Macs are designed to automatically convert PC text to Mac text conventions and back. It was REAL common for people to have that issue back when Mac emulators were the rage on the Amiga.

[motorollin]

I just downloaded the version of Lha Thomas linked to (thanks!) and copied it to C:Lha. I also downloaded Peperoni from Aminet.

I ran Peperoni and dragged my OS3.9 volume on to it, and created a new Lha archive in RAM:. Copied over to my Mac, and attempted to extract it, and when it got to about 60% I got an error that Stuffit Expander had unexpectedly quit.

I copied the file from the Mac to my Mark: partition and opened it in Unarc. I tried to unarchive it to a directory in RAM:, but got an error at about 60% that it couldn't decompress the file ''. (that's two inverted commas (or a quote) and a full stop).

I thought maybe the file had been damaged in transit, or modified somehow by being on the Mac filesystem, so I tried unarchiving the original Lha file I created in RAM: (which has never been copied to the Mac or to a different partition) but got the same error!

Am I doing something stupid?

--
moto

[InTheSand]

Thomas wrote:
ZIP does not preserve the Amiga file attributes. As preserving the file attributes is the main reason for using an archiver, it is no very wise to use ZIP.

I thought the Amiga versions of ZIP did preserve file attributes? I've not had any problems transferring stuff from Amiga to Amiga via the ZIP archive format. Obviously, if you subsequently modify the archive with a non-Amiga ZIP application, the attributes are liable to be lost.

 - Ali