Very Computer

Hello, gang :)

One week ago I bought Seagate TRAVAN-4 internal tape backup. I had
kernel 2.0.35 and one of he reasons I pickup up this tape drive was
because I saw it listed in the supported hardware list. I recompiled my
kernel to ensure support for ATAPI tape drive and everythings seemed to
be just fine. However, when I tried to write on it ..about 50 % of the
time my kernel would report an error in ide-tape. Then I read some more
about the ATAPI tape support in 2.0.35 and saw it was in ALPHA
development stage. Thus, I ended up downloading the last development
kernel - 2.1.126 and now everything is just beautiful. I have my tape
drive working.

My question is - how do I make multiple backups on one tape. I use
PerfectBACKUP+ , but it doesn't seem to utilize the whole tape - it's
native capacity is 4GB and my backup on the linux box is only about
2.5GB. I wanted to use the rest of it to backup one of my Win95
computers too. However, whenever I try to make a second backup, it seems
that I would always overwrite the previous one. I also tried KBackup,
but is didn't work with STREAM device - such as my /dev/ht0 ...

Would  anyone share experience in this area. I really wanted to utilize
the whole tape. How do I do it ?:((

Thank you for your help! :)

Best regards,
Petar Karafezov

I don't know about your backup software, but you probably just need
to position your tape at end-of-data before starting the backup
process.  I do this with "mt fsf #" where "#" is the number of
tape files I want to skip. Or "mt eod" should work also. This
presumes /dev/tape is pointing at the /dev/* file for your drive
or you have TAPE set to it.

The bad thing about these cheapo TR-4 tape drives is that they
take as long to get to the end of those files as they took to
write them. That is, a very long time, when you're waiting.

Unless you've got a very fast computer, and maybe even then, I think
you'll find they backup goes a lot faster if you don't use
compression.

[Stuff on backing up to an internal TR4 seagate ide tape]

I think I got the same drive as you. Can you help me understand how to
backup to this drive? My problem is that I don't know what linux
thinks the tape drive is called (ie: /dev/?). What name is the atapi
listed as? Thanks!

Bobby, it's /dev/ht0 :) I personally founf BRU2000 PE on my Linux CDROM
and I find it GREAT :)

if you can't find it on your cd simply to go YAHOO and search for
BRU2000.

Good luck! :)

Best regards,
PK