[H-GEN] Tape Drives

[Michael Anthon]

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason Henry Parker" <jasonp at uq.net.au>
To: <general at lists.humbug.org.au>
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2002 10:06 PM
Subject: Re: [H-GEN] Tape Drives
<snip>
> > The other method I have used is to use something like 'tar c stuff |
> > gzip -9 | dd of=/dev/tape'.  It's a little heavy on the CPU usage,
> > but in the middle of the night, who cares?
>
> Of course, you don't want to do anything like that if hardware
> compression is still turned on.  -9 may also be a bit excessive.
>
Well, I did say "like"  I think I actually dropped the -9 after doing a few
tests and finding out that it didn't really help much and made the whole
process take about twice as long.  Also the note about turning off drive
compression when doing this is something I didn't remember to write down but
I definitely don't use the compression when using gzip as well, I don't
think it would hurt but there is practically no benefit in doing so.

Something I just thought of... do all drives (of the same form factor of
course) use the same compression algorithm?  If I write on a Sony DDS4 with
hardware compression, can I read it back on a WhoFlungDung drive?  Never
even really thought of this before...

Cheers
Michael


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