On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, Fabbro, Andrew P wrote:

> > 8. LGTO writes in proprietary format to tapes, NBU is modified gnu-tar.
>
> I don't see this is a benefit.  If you have a set of tapes, you need NBU to
> restore from them.  I suppose if there was a nuclear war and you were the
> last man standing and all you had was gnu tar, NBU, and a tape drive, then
> perhaps you'd be further along, but otherwise...how likely are you to try
> any kind of restore without the backup software?  Also, I'm not sure those
> tar files are really readable in the sense that you can use GNU tar to
> recover a file.  You're typically multiplexing blocks from different
> clients...my understanding was always more that the tar files on tape are
> "containers" (via max fragment size) for data, not "tar archives" in the
> recovery sense.
>

I also don't see any "scorched earth" benefits to this, however, it is
nice to have to assure that your old tapes can be read in the future if
your company moves to another platform.  (e.g. you company gets bought)
You can only use GNU tar to read the tapes if they are not multiplexed.

I de-multiplex all tapes during duplication so restore speeds are optimal.

Thanks,

-Jon