On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 3:04 PM, Alan McKay <alan.mckay at gmail.com> wrote: >> > Compressing makes it nigh impossible to know whether or not the data will > fit on the tape without doing a test compress ahead of time, which can take > several hours depending on the amount of data. Tape drives generally have their own compression options that you can change with the mt command. Their speed can also vary wildly depending on the block size you use and whether you can supply the data fast enough to keep them streaming. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com