wojtek@wojtek.from.pl writes:

>> And no, I don't think it's a good idea using the drive's compression
>> mechanism for _backups_...
>
>why?!

because recovering data from a damaged tape on which the stuff is
compressed is near to impossible.  this is especially important for
dat, which is a rather low reliability medium (with "error free"[1]
dds tapes, nobody's really trying to store data on audio tapes, right?)

mkb

[1] one of the worst marketing lies around.