Backing up to an external FAT32 disk

[Derek Broughton]

Liam Proven wrote:

> I am trying to backup a 98% full RAID array (some 100GB of stuff) onto
> a 400GB FAT32 USB2 external hard drive. I don't have space on the RAID
> itself to create the archive, nor on my 3G root FS.
... 
> Friends have suggested using tar with -FL and a call to mktemp to
> split the archive into randomly-named 4G chunks, but then I can't see
> how I'd restore it again; how will tar work out what the next volume
> to examine is?
... 
> I'm not wedded to using tar - I'd consider dump or something as well.
 
kdar, using 'dar', has a very neat ability to slice its output into any size
you want.  It's intended for archiving to CD/DVD, but I don't see why it
wouldn't work with a 400G drive.  Of course, it's a KDE app...
-- 
derek