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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!hp9000.csc.cuhk.hk!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!rpi!utcsri!torn!watserv2.uwaterloo.ca!watserv1!mks.com!fredw From: fredw@mks.com (Fred Walter) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Getting tapes to stream (was Re: What kind of tape is OK w/ 386BSD? Message-ID: <1992Jul31.161715.12462@mks.com> Date: 31 Jul 92 16:17:15 GMT References: <28JUL199218203085@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov> <1992Jul29.161438.6372@mks.com> <55595@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> Organization: Mortice Kern Systems Inc., Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA Lines: 18 mm@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Mike MacKenzie) writes: >I have a Wangtek 5150ES SCSI-36 tape drive and it works, but slowly. >It took over 12 hours to back up ~80 meg. I've tried various buffer >sizes with dd with no improvment. Wow, 12 hours ? What sort of hardware (386 ?) and how fast is it ? My Wangtek 5150EQ wasn't able to stream, but it didn't take that long... You could try 'ddd'. I don't recall where it can be found; probably on ftp.uu.net somewhere. It works by having two processes, one filling up a buffer whilst the other writes a buffer out; that way the tape drive always is being fed a buffer (no pauses while the buffer dd uses is refilled). Or some such thing. fred -- Disclaimer: everything I write is my *personal* opinion and does not represent or reflect the opinion of the company which employs me.