Backup Clarification - (Im still a little bit new here)

[AA]

Hello all, I think that I have finally started to get
things settup in a way with which I am comfortable. 
This just leaves me with deciding on a backup plan. 
After trying for a few days to get Norton Ghost 2003
to image my linux partitions, I have finally given up
on that and I think I have a new solution that I would
like to run by all of you here.  In my box, I have my
pri master formatted for windows, then the pri slave
has 2 10 G partitions, 1 NTFS for data, and the other
I have made ext3 and mounted it as /.  Then, on my
secondary master I have a 1 G swap partition and then
29 G for /home.  
I read the article on how to backup here:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087
and it makes me wonder, can I "tar cvpzf
backup.tgz...", 
then move the backup file to my /home partition for
storage, (or is there a way to make it created there
in the first place instead of root?) - and then in the
event that I need to restore it, boot from the live
cd, (or systemrescuecd), Re-Format my / and then copy
the backup.tgz from /home and restore the OS?  I
realize that grub would also most likely need to be
restored, and I also realize that there is no need to
reboot in order to restore this file, but I still want
to know if the reformat, then restore would work-(I
want to be able to go back to the fresh install
without taking the time to do the install).  Also, in
the process of making the backup would I need to
exclude the /home to keep it from backing that up as
well?  And finally, it talks in that article about
recreating the folders that you exclude, how do I deal
with /home in that instance?  /home itself is just an
empty folder on / into which the sec master HD
partition is mounted, correct?  So would I just need
to re-create that folder as well, and then edit
/etc/fstab as required?
Thanks in advance, I love this list
SMH

P.S. does it make a bigg difference if the / partition
is first or last on a HD?  I have heard that the first
partition is the fastest, is that true?


		
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