Myths about tape block sizes

[Lars P. Fischer]

>>>>> On 31 Dec 90 17:28:40 GMT, dan at breeze.bellcore.com (Daniel Strick) said:

Daniel> There is no universally optimum buffer size.

True. It's strange. People keep telling that I should use the default,
that all sort of horrible things will happen otherwise, that the default
is faster anyway, etc.

On all the various platforms I've tried, I have found something faster,
and I've yet to see problems. I often use 2000 for block size, and it
tends to be *much* faster that the default (a factor of three or so). It
worked in '85, in worked three days ago, and it probably still does.