On Mon, Nov 24, 2003 at 09:46:31AM +0100, Martin Oehler wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Am So, 2003-11-23 um 14.16 schrieb Gene Heskett:
> > There is amtapetype, which will destructively write the tape till it 
> > hits EOT, and will tell you the size it found.  See the man page for 
> > running options to help speed it up as its quite slow, doing 2 
> > passes.
> 


Check your tapes capacity and rated writing speed.
Be sure they are the native values,
not the values for HW compression on.

Then divide one by the other.  You come out with a
"time" value that I'm betting will be about 3 hours.
This is the time for a single pass under the vendor's
optimum conditions.  You will probably not reach their
rated speed.

As amtapetype makes two complete passes, double that
time value.  This is the minimum time an amtapetype run could
take.  It is not amtapetype that is slow, it is the medium.

As Paul B. notes, make sure you give amtapetype a reasonable
estimate of the native size of the tape.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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