There are several things to consider when implementing a backup plan for Hermes. The best thing to do as far as saftey is concerned is to backup everything. Unfortunatley, that takes time and hard drive space. Shared Backup will take care of most of the time part of this problem and can help with the space part. Below are a few things to consider.
WHAT TO BACKUP?
At a minimum you should backup the Hermes Shared file. That file contains all the user data, message base data, file directory data and all the menus and text files Hermes displays. If you aren't using compression you can save some space by only including the part of the file that has the user data. The idea here is that the other stuff changes less often. If you use this option you will need to use the "Fix Shared" utility to recover that data. You should also backup the Messages folder if at all possible. Hermes Shared files and the Messages folder should be backed up in tandom. The reason for this is that user data concerning which messages have been read will get out of wack if you mix backup dates between the two files. You can get away with it if you use a utility like FixShared, which has the ability to zero out all the users new scan data, but it is saver to just backup the Messages.
Once you have included the Hermes Shared file and Message folder you might as well include the other folders as well unless you have really large transfer directories (for instance if you use BBIAB). The transfer directories (in the Data folder) compress really well (see below) so it isn't that big of a deal. Similarly the GFiles and Logs folders are either small to begin with or will compress fairly well.
HOW MUCH DISK SPACE WITH IT ALL TAKE?
Compressing files will save the following amounts of space:
90% Hermes Shared file
95% Hermes Shared file (data fork only)
60% Messages files
80% Data files
??% Logs - this depends, they compress well but are small which hurts the %
60% G-Files - this also depends on what you have in them but this is close
On my BBS for example the Messages file is about 2700K and the Hermes Shared file is just over 300K for a total of about 3100K. When compressed these took up about 1200K. Not bad but you still have to make room for the 1200K. One option is to use a floppy disk to backup your files but it is really important that everything fit and that the disk is always in place because the Stuffit Engine will stop everything in order to notify you that the backup failed.
