Reading through the posts here, I've found that the generally accepted convention is to zip/rar everything according to directory size, and the PAR those archives.  Is it possible to *not* do this?  Say, for example, I have a large number of files that are all ~1MB in size each, scattered (organized) in various directories (with subdirectories).  There is also the possibility of duplicated filenames.  Can I back this up to CD/DVD without zipping them up first?

I have another situation where I am backing up numerous large files.  Usually, the free space left on the DVD would be less than the size of any single one of the files.  I know from experience that a corrupted CD won't let me retrieve any part of the damaged file.  Is there a suggested approach for this type of a backup?

And finally, I usually do "full" backups of my data every several months.  The data to be backed up varies greatly in size and is embedded in numerous subdirectories.  To preserve the directory structure, I assume the best thing to do would be to create several zip files in accordance to the folders that appear in the root folder, and then PAR those?

Cheers,
Interlude