I am using a backup to disk setup. I have my tapetype from amanda.conf
below. Backups aren't happening as quickly as I had hoped, and I am looking
at ways to improve matters. According to the amanda man page, the speed
parameter is not even used by amanda currently, but it also says the default
is 200 bps. So I am wondering if amanda is in fact using that value and I am
hurting myself by not specifying it, or if she tries to write at the fastest
speed possible, or if she is using the default 200 bps.

from amanda.conf:
<snip>
tapetype HARD-DISK              # what kind of tape it is (see tapetypes
below)
</snip>

<snip>
define tapetype HARD-DISK {
   comment "40GB Hard disk"
   length 40000 mbytes
}
</snip>

Thanks,
Josh