On Friday 22 November 2002 11:01, Paul Bijnens wrote:

> > If there is one flipped bit (read error), everything compressed with gzip
> > after that position is lost. With HW compression you can continue
> > restoring after that position plus some overhead.
>
> This comes up now and then, but I have my doubts about it.  It assumes
> that on the tape are only your databits, and there is no error detection

To paraphrase a best selling book - "blessed are those who have not seen, and 
yet believe"

This has happened to me. My own fault in that cabling/termination on the SCSI 
chain was not up to scratch but it led to very occasional bad bits going to 
the tape which didn't give any errors when writing but when attempting to 
read (e.g. to verify) I got GUN tar errors from the gzipped tar file. Tar can 
resynchronise after bit errors but it seems that gzip cannot. This had me 
puzzled for a while until I redid the cabling and termination on the SCSI 
chain when all became sweetness and light.


Kind regards,


Niall  O Broin