Hi !
After switching from my selfmade single-DAT-drive-tar-gzip-dds2index backup solution
to amanda the only thing I'm missing is the possibility to be able to restore files
very quickly.
What I used to use is a program called dds2index under linux, which creates an index
of a tar archive with the actual (absolute) tape block numbers occupied by each file.
This allowed me to restore a file anywhere in the archive within minutes with the help
of the fast seek command supported by the DAT drive (instead of hours in the worst
case when the file happens to be at the end of the archive).
What I thought of now is to enhance the amverify utility to not just read the (tar)
archives but create such an index to be appended to tape. The only thing I don't know
is if such a fast seek functionality is supported by other drive technologies besides
DAT (which is the only one I have experience with and testing possibilities). Is
anybody using one of those "bigger" drives and knows a) whether it's supported and b)
how to use it on your particular drive type, so I can make the modifications as
generic as possible.
Thanks for any infos.
Urban
