>>Eric, Thank you for your reply...
>
>I'm not Eric, but I'll try IAC.
Sorry for calling you Eric...

and thanks for your help

BR

>
>>
>>I am using NTFS, and system redudancy Raid 5 ....
>>So, as I understood that I can go ahead and compress the images (D:) drive, so I'll not have the problem of making a tape backup on more than one tape.
>>
>>BUT... the question now is .....
>>in case of any HDD faliare/crache ... whiche forces me to use the Tape backup to restore the files from the tape ... - (remember I compressed the drive) - will the files be restored WITHOUT any problem because of the compresion I did ?
>>
>
>Assuming that the backup was made on a file-by-file basis, the issue of compression is immaterial - the data is saved to tape without regard to the compression used to store the data on the drive; each file is read as a byte stream without regard to the compression that was used to store the data on the drive. The most noticable issue is that the optimistic estimate of how much data can be crammed on the tape is likely to be off; most tape backup software assumes that it will be able to compress the data written to the tape. It's exceedingly unlikely that the backup software will be able to further compress the data further, so if you have a tape backup product that assumes that it's going to get 2:1 compression when backing up, it's not going to fit as much stuff on one tape as it'll guess at.
>
>I'd avoid using track-by-track or image backup methods to ensure that any single file will be easily recoverable, but most commercial software is smart enough to at least give you the option of file-by-file backup. NT's native backup program works file-by-file. The commercial products I use (ArcServe and BackupExec) also work file-by-file.