Backup and restore for Digital Unix follows standard Unix conventions with some minor differences related to AdvFS file systems. Commands useful for backup include:

• tar - The standard Unix tar command.
• cpio - The standard Unix cpio command
• dump,restore - The Digital dump and restore commands are only applicable to UFS file systems.
• rdump,rrestore - Dumps or restores UFS file systems to/from remote tape drives
• vdump,vrestore - Dumps or restores AdvFS file systems. Is purported to allow better file system integrity on active file systems than dump does for UFS file systems. There is no built in method for backing up AdvFS file systems to a remote tape drive like there is with UFS systems using rdump. To acomplish this, you need to use the kind of syntax you would use on a "tar" or "cpio" command that is using a remote tape drive. This involves sending the "vdump" output to standard out, and piping that output to an "rsh" command running "dd" on a system with a tape drive connected.

See the section regarding root disk recovery for additional concerns regarding disaster recovery scenerios.

Sybase raw disk partitions are backed up using sybase utilities accessed via "isql".