Depending on what you're doing, it might be good to do two copies: an image and a set of extracted or semi-extracted files. On the QIC front, Apollo wbak tapes and SGI "inst" tapes come to mind: if you copy off files using e.g. dd, you must write them back to a tape before you can use them (format is proprietary and uses head and tail files). If you distcp or rbak them off as files also, you have more options (you can either write a tape or set up some sort of network install system). Std tar and cpio files don't have this issue, I'm not sure about 1/2" systems. Scott Quinn