> > Is there some reason you aren't using amanda? Give it some holding > disk space and it will run multiple backups at once, buffering on > disk, and figure out how they should go on the tape for you. > I'm archiving, not backing up. I looked at Amanda for a few days and it would be really clunky to do what I want. Anyway I found this : [root at solexa-db tmp]# export GZIP=-v [root at solexa-db tmp]# tar czf files.tar.gz file{1,2,3,4,5} 98.4% So I'm golden :-) -- “Don't eat anything you've ever seen advertised on TV” - Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food"