Archive Tapes

[Dante_A_Nicolello at cup.portal.com]

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


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dante_a_nicolello at cup.portal.com   ____
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