[CLUE-Tech] Tape Drives - why?

[mikehavlicek at netzero.net]

---(from thread)----
I cringe at the idea of  tar -czvf server.tgz /
We have a LOT of little files.
Maybe it's possible to do dd | gzip?
I think most backups basically image partitions so they don't need to 
know much about the filesystem... am I wrong?
----------------------------------------------------

I used to have to backup many small files containing circuit usage info that had to be retained for 5 yrs as I recall. It was for a telecom. The bridging ATM switches would in a "strange" way collect circuit activity data and send that to a Sparc server that would format and send the data to a linux server.  I was responsible for the linux server. I ran tar via cron to archive the usage data. Then that data was to be burnt to CD. (BTW I had good luck optimizing the filesystems for small files, which as far as know can't be done during a standard install of linux)

The downside was cd burning without human intervention. Are there cd burning jukeboxes ?

-Mike

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