[Gllug] [bit OT] what block size is best for a tape drive?

[Adrian McMenamin]

On Mon, May 8, 2006 8:35 am, Mike Brodbelt said:
> t.clarke wrote:
>
>> I have never used the hardware compression on the drives,  as I believe
>> the feature requires suitable software (not available on my machine) to
>> write the necessary command(s) to the drive.  As far as I am aware the
>> drive
>> runs at the same physical speed whether compression is on or off;
>> compression
>> is simply done on the fly and results in more data being written to a
>> given
>> block of tape.
>
> Hardware compression requires no host-side software. Most drives provide
> a means to control it through software - the mt command can toggle
> compression on or off for DAT drives or other compatible hardware.
>

Indeed, and I have turned it on. But is there any point is using it
(hardware compression) alongside software (bz2 or gzip)?

The backup script currently does this

tar cvjf /dev/st0 /

and I am wondering if that is the best way to do it?

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