GARBSEN, Germany--July 28, 2003-- HELIOS Software GmbH, a leading developer of network and prepress server software, announced the release of HELIOS Xtar for Mac OS X. Available as a free download from the HELIOS web site, the HELIOS Xtar utility can be used to clone a Mac OS X system disk, and backup and restore disks, files and folders, all with full HFS support. While the HFS disk format stores data and meta-data (e.g. Finder and Resource info) within one file, standard UNIX applications can only see the data part, and the Resource information is lost using standard UNIX-based tools, such as "cp", "tar", "dump", "pax", "cat", "dd", etc. This means that the copies will be incomplete and many files will not work. For example, booting will not work, previews from EPSF files are missing, applications will not detect their own files anymore, etc. The HELIOS GNU-based Xtar saves each HFS file as two files in the standard tar container format to preserve all special attributes and additional information. During a restore with "Xtar" on an HFS volume, the resource and finder information are restored into valid HFS files containing all information and the volume is bootable after being restored. Just like HELIOS LanTest, a popular free utility for testing network throughput, HELIOS Xtar will likely become the de facto standard for "tar" on Mac OS X, and further demonstrates the leadership and expertise of HELIOS on the UNIX platform. For more information and documentation for HELIOS Xtar commands go to http://www.helios.de/news/news03/N_06_03.html.