[rescue] Block size and the single DD

[David L Kindred (Dave)]

>>>>> "Kevin" == Kevin Loch <kloch at gurunet.net> writes:

    Kevin> David L Kindred (Dave) wrote:
    >>
    >> Not to mention that most *restore programs have that nice
    >> interactive mode to make it so much easier to find the [l]user's
    >> file(s) when they really don't remember the correct absolute
    >> pathname.  That sure beats waiting for a "tar tv" of a huge image
    >> just to have to re-read it all for the extraction.
    >>

    Kevin> If you also have it on disk it's even faster than a smart
    Kevin> utility and a tape.  I'm not advocating replacing tape, just
    Kevin> spooling to disk first.

    Kevin> That offers and additional backup copy(s) as well as much
    Kevin> faster restore time.  Tape is still useful for redundancy and
    Kevin> offsite storage.

Actually the fastest thing I've seen is what we have here for our
primary server, the online snapshot.  Ever since we deployed our NetApp
Filer everything the [l]users have deleted has still been in the
snapshot(s).  Instant recovery!


For archives (as opposed to backups) I've experimented with adding a
second tape file to the end of the tape with the output from the "tar
cvf" that created the tape in the first place.  For tape drives that can
rapidly get to the later tape files it can speed up partial recoveries.

-- 
David L. Kindred
Unix Systems & Network Administrator
Telesciences, Inc.

2000 Midlantic Drive, Suite 410
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d.kindred at telesciences.com
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