Archive Tapes

[Randy Jarrett WA4MEI]

Dante_A_Nicolello at cup.portal.com writes:

>I am having two problems with an Archive 60 meg Fastape.
>My setup:
>        25mhz 80386 w/cache
>        isc/386/ix 2.02
>        Adaptec SCSI adapter w/ scsi HD

>Problem one:
>        Tape does not stream. It runs for about 3 seconds, stops.
>Then the HD reads more data, then the tapes rewinds a little and
>goes another 3 seconds and this repeats. This makes backing up take
>a long time. I have tried both tar and cpio. I noticed that if I
>make the buffer size in cpio 51200, it seems to write more data at
>a time. The question is, can it read from the disk and write to
>the tape concurrently? Or is this just wishfull thinking.
>By the way, I have an Irwin 20 meg tape for dos that will read from
>the disk and write to the tape concurrently. The tape streams all the
>way through. 

>Problem two:
>        When the tape reaches the end of the cartridge, not the end of the
>current track, unix produces a "write() error" instead of prompting
>me to switch tapes.

>I asked Archive tech support about this, but they weren't
>too famillar with unix and couldn't help me.  Interactive tech support
>just told me to adjust the buffer size. If you know anything about
>this, let me know what to do. Thanks

What you really need is a program called afio.  This is a cpio replacement
that allows you to setup multiple buffers and will also fork off a child
task to do the writing to disk.  With the proper selection of size and number
of buffers my tape system (Archive 60) doesn't stop except to change direction.

If you have problems finding afio let me know and I will ship a copy to you.



-- 
Randy Jarrett  WA4MEI 
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