Backup tool?

[Tom Smith]

Brian McKee wrote:

>On 07/08/06, John Dangler <jdangler at atlantic.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>On Mon, 2006-08-07 at 15:33 +0200, Florian Diesch wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>"Aron Lopes Petrucci" <aron at uel.br> wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Now I'd like to backup it, something like a snapshot. So, if it crashjes, I
>>>>can restore it in this position.
>>>>
>>>>I found some backup tools, but they are dinamic tools, wich record data in
>>>>some folder. It's not a good idea if the hardware crashes. I'd like
>>>>something wich records on CDs.
>>>>
>>>>Can anybody tell me about any util to do this?
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>,----[ ~/bin/pkgdesc mondo ]
>>>| Package: mondo
>>>| Description: powerful disaster recovery suite
>>>|  Mondo is reliable. It backs up your Debian GNU/Linux server or workstation to
>>>|  tape, CD-R, CD-RW, NFS or hard disk partition. In the event of catastrophic
>>>|  data loss, you will be able to restore all of your data [or as much as you
>>>|  want], from bare metal if necessary. Mondo is in use by numerous blue-chip
>>>|  enterprises and large organizations, dozens of smaller companies, and tens of
>>>|  thousands of users.
>>>      
>>>
>>[snip]
>>Mondo / Mindi also has alot of problems.  I tried for almost 2 months
>>(unsuccessfully) to get it to work on 2 other distro's.  When confronted
>>directly with some of the more basic functional errors, email responses
>>were vague and argumentative at best...  Unless something has really
>>changed with this package - don't rely on it.
>>    
>>
>
>It isn't the friendliest thing in the world, it won't boot with some
>cdroms, and it's confusing at times.
>On the other hand, once you get it to make a good image, it will
>always restore.   In addition, your  data is stored in cpio archives,
>so it's always recoverable, even if you can't get it to do a bare
>metal restore for some reason.
>  
>

Why does using cpio archives make the data "always recoverable"?