Re: heads-up about SCSI tape drives

["Susan G. Kleinmann" <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>]

Hi Bill --

You said:
>   One thing to think about is the blocksize.  If you've run "mt -f
>   /dev/st0 setblk 0" (which is good for reading tapes written by SunOS
>   and AIX I have found) you won't be able read tapes written with the
>   default block size (whatever that is) and vice-versa.

>   I haven't done any performance tests to compare the effects of
>   different block sizes but would be interested to hear from others
>   who have (I use tar for backups).

I have tried a lot of blocksizes and reboots between them with no
difference (or improvement).

Give tob or afio directly a whirl (if you have time).  I know I've got a 
sick 9 GByte disk drive (and we're going to the doctor tomorrow), and 
it's not clear whether or not my tape problems are related.
In any case, it's awfully curious why I am not having problems with tar
but do have awful problems with afio on the same (350 MByte) directory.

Cheers,
Susan