Are there any clever ideas for speeding up restores??

We have 5 or 6 servers with millions of small files. It is these that are
causing the thought processes. It is expected in the event of a disaster
that these may take 5 or 6 days to restore. The slow restore is due to both
the small files, and the number of tapes that will be required as the data
to be restored will be spread over many different tapes written over the
last 3 months or so.


Can we take an export once a week. Use this in the event of a disaster to
import a known state, restore using this, and then restore the remaining
changes using the normal backups?

Will collocation help enough to make it worth while?

Can we produce a tape that can be used to restore all or a majority of the
system?

Any other ideas??


Cheers, Chris