On Dec 20, 2011, at 2:14 PM, Gomes, Robert wrote: > After a discussion on computing.net, I’m writing to suggest a new option for > the tar command. Namely, to copy an entire tar file from tape to disk > without extracting its contents. … Community suggestions around using dd > or piping seem to border on blind stabs as opposed to having a legitimate, > concrete means to carry out this particular operation with data integrity.
dd was designed for exactly this purpose: copying data to/from devices with fixed block size requirements, which includes tape drives and other "raw" media. $ dd if=<tape drive> of=<disk file> bs=<block size> Tim
