.tar or .sit

[windowsblowsass]

im going to do a backup and i want to compress files that will be burned to a dvd i want to know which format is smaller and which is more reliable

[bousozoku]

Using Tar and Gzip to compress files is usually gives smaller files, but these will not work correctly on typical Mac OS files and applications as those utilities know nothing of resource and data forks.

[crazzyeddie]

Resource and data forks aren't usually important on OS X... but if you have any OS 9 or even some carbon apps, they might need those... so I would say use Panther's zip feature first, then .sitx (which has better compression than just .sit)

[kenkooler]

I agree on zipping them first, to preserve the resource forks. Then you can .tar.gz them, sitx produces smaller files but is much slower.