HELIOS Xtar now available for Mac Intel

Free Mac backup tool Xtar from HELIOS Software supports open source to ensure reliable cross-platform file transfers.

Hannover, Germany, March 12, 2007 – HELIOS Software GmbH has released for free download a Mac Intel compatible version of its backup tool HELIOS Xtar.

As a leading developer of cross-platform networking, PDF, and image server solutions, HELIOS Software is able to ensure reliable transfers of Mac meta data (Finder and resource information) between different platforms. Now HELIOS passes on its accumulated development experience to the Open Source community in the form of the free Xtar tool, which is basically the UNIX “tar” program extended by HELIOS to include full Mac OS X (PPC/Intel) compatibility.

“It is a HELIOS Software tradition to share our development know-how with the community in the form of free tools,” explained Helmut Tschemernjak, CEO and president of HELIOS. For example, HELIOS LanTest is used worldwide as a standard tool for measuring network data throughput. “Likewise, HELIOS File System Test, is a tool used frequently as a neutral reference to verify the Mac OS X compatibility of file systems,” noted Tschemernjak.

HELIOS Xtar for Mac (PPC/Intel) stores each HFS file as a double file in the standard “tar” format. Unicode file names as well as all meta data – including creation and modification date – are preserved. During the restore with Xtar to an HFS volume, the Finder and resource information are written into a valid HFS file. In doing so, all Mac OS X specific meta data are preserved so that volumes are bootable after the restore.

In this aspect, “HELIOS Xtar qualifies as the ideal tool for cloning Mac OS X system drives,” reports Tschemernjak. In HELIOS server installations, “Xtar reliably performs data migration from Mac OS X systems to HELIOS volumes and vice versa.” HELIOS “htar” is a commercial HELIOS developed “tar” tool, which preserves Mac meta data even on restoring data to HELIOS volumes under Windows. The “htar” tool is part of the HELIOS UB server suite for Windows, which has been available since the end of the year 2006.