I was talking about backing "files" as opposed to low-level filesystems...
To some degree, its much safer to make readonly file systems, since any
bugs in filesystem code won't munge the filesystem.
If a filesystem is totally lost, I suppose you could restore a lowest
common denominator (i.e. dos) and not lose any data (but maybe
lose attributes/names).
Also, it is probably easier to shove data into a new file system
than to restore files onto an arbitrary working filesystem...
Maybe something at user level (createfs?) to operate with data on a
raw paritition?
-- marty leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com Member of the League for Programming Freedom