[SunRescue] tape as block device?

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Friday, March 3, 2000 at 09:13:07 (-0800), Kurt Huhn wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [SunRescue] tape as block device?
>
> I'm aware of the posisble consequences, but right now I need to get some
> data stored temporarily then moved back.  I have no spare HDs or external
> cases for them, so that's why I'm wondering about using the tape drive.
> I've thought of mounting NFS volumes, but this is a *lot* of data, and my
> other Sparcs don't have enough storage on them to hold it.

If you're only storing it temporarly are you sure you need a real live
filesystem and not just an archive copy of it?  Why not just use tar,
cpio, dump, or something similar?

In fact I'd almost be willing to bet that even if you need periodic
access to this data during the time it has to be off on tape you'd be
far better off to just get some extra tapes and swap active data sets on
your system as necessary.  This would probably prove to be faster and
more reliable than trying to use a tape drive for a live filesystem.

Better yet if you have a CD-ROM drive on this system see if any of your
friends have a CD burner you can borrow for a day to dump it onto CD!
Then you'll have the best of both worlds.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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