tar syntax and backing up

[Tyler Smith <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca>]

Hi,

Related to another post concerning the possible demise of my
harddrive, I thought I'd better confirm with wiser people that my
backup plan is doing what I think it's doing.

I've got a full backup of all my important data in tar.gz files on my
harddrive and burned onto cds. I want to backup everything that has
been modified since the last full backup, so I use:

tar --newer-mtime ../mail4Mar07.tar.gz -cvzf 18Mar2007.tar.gz \
 /home/tyler/bibtex/ /home/tyler/thesis/ /home/tyler/analysis/ \
 /home/tyler/grassdata/ /home/tyler/Mail/

As far as I can tell from the output and tar -t this is correct, but
I'd hate to find out after my drive dies that I'm mistaken...

Thanks!

-- 
Regards,

Tyler Smit