For the record, here's the output of amtapetype for the Hewlett Packard DAT160
USB with hardware compression OFF.

There are no visible jumpers or dip-switches to disable hardware compression
like earlier DAT devices - inside the enclosure the drive itself is a fully
shielded unit.

Compression can be turned off using HP Library and Tape Tools for Linux but the
setting appears to be volatile and although the LTT app runs in a console it
seems a bit overkill for running what seems to be a bunch of compressed perl
scripts. Anyone found a workaround for soft configuration?

Can anyone suggest why the filemark is showing such a large value?

grunt:/usr/sbin # amtapetype  -o -e 80g -f /dev/nst0
Writing 512 Mbyte   compresseable data:  94 sec
Writing 512 Mbyte uncompresseable data:  82 sec
Estimated time to write 2 * 81920 Mbyte: 26240 sec = 7 h 17 min
wrote 2490330 32Kb blocks in 95 files in 12562 seconds (short write)
wrote 2477223 32Kb blocks in 189 files in 12784 seconds (short write)
define tapetype unknown-tapetype {
    comment "just produced by tapetype prog (hardware compression off)"
    length 78236 mbytes
    filemark 4461 kbytes
    speed 6272 kps
}


rb


-- 
 Rory Beaton
 Instrumentation Group
 NERC Sea Mammal Research Unit







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