Ed, it sounds like you're speaking from experience. *grin* > Make Back ups! Just had my butt saved by this today. I run WinXP inside of VMWare, and WinXP decided to crap out on me. Pulled out the backups (hardrives in firewire cases) and did 'cp -ar'. I still needed to update the vm from CVS, but all's well. *whew* [OT: wsu.edu?? Hah! Just down the road a handful of miles.]