LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Andrew Hill <list@fornax.net>
  To  : <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 23:56:15 +0930

Restoring from tape

Hi all,

I've been backing up to tape for a while now, using an external SCSI 
DDS4 tape drive. This has been an absolute joy compared to my memories 
of trying to back up to Travan tape drives.

However, I've recently tried to restore a few files off the tapes, and 
have met with what I can only describe as moderate success.

While backing up various files, I have ensured that I am using tar's 
verify option to make sure that the files on tape are the same as on the 
disk, and have seen no errors reported. When restoring, the tape drive 
runs along quite pleasantly, and does what is asked faithfully - but 
sometimes tar gives up partway through the tape, indicating that there 
have been too many unrecoverable errors to continue.


Is this a fault caused by me through a tar-grokkage failure, or is there 
something more sinister going on?

Cheers,



Notes:

I'm backing up files with:
   tar cpPvWf /dev/tape files...

and restoring with:
   tar xvf /dev/tape files...

-- 
Andrew Hill
"RAID - Don't believe the hype." -- 2001-09-22

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