On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 16:44:08 +0200, "Daniel Brewer" <danielb@cat.co.za>
wrote:
> Secondly, how can this data be accessed under windows? Does windows see
> the tape drive as another drive on the system? Or do you have to copy
> everything off the tape to the HD before accessing it?

It's going to be a two-step process.  Your windows machine won't see
NetBSD's tape device at all, because there's no "samba for tapes".  So,
the tape-disk interaction will all happen on the NetBSD machine.  

If I were doing this, I'd install Samba and use it as a file server to my
windows machines.  I'd write to the tape with tar, because it seems
natural to use "tar archive" for this purpose.  If the data are stored on
the windows machines' drives, Samba can even read their shared drives and
write to the tape drive in one swell foop.  

tar is tar.  (In -current, I believe tar is also pax.)  You can get a
listing, restore one file or all.  Not fancy, but it does the job.  

You know what they say: "Nothing fancy, nothing pained".  

--jkl