On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Richard Grace wrote:

> >>> "Brian A. Seklecki" <lavalamp@spiritual-machines.org> 18/03/02 18:06:05 >>>
>
> > 2) Is there a reliable way to estimate the maximum capacity of the drive
> > based on the length of the tape (aside from the advertised capacity on the
> > media)?
>
> There is a neat utility that comes with Amanda (www.amanda.org, or in
> /usr/pkgsrc/sysutils/amanda) called tapetype.  Basically, it just writes a

There's got to be an easier way to do it using a standard set of tools
(dd, cpio, dump, tar, etc.).  I'll figure it out eventually.  I'm
presently scouring Google and other mailing list archives.

This stuffs been around for 30 years, I imagine someone figured it out
before me >:}

-lava

> bunch of stuff to the tape, and tests the size of the media based on the
> number of records written.  It can take a long time, but it does make a
> good estimate of the length of the tapes.  DDS tapes are rarely as large
> as they are claimed to be.
>
> Richard Grace.
>
>

later -           | _BonaFide[] = { coder, author, | /~\ The ASCII Ribbon
Brian A. Seklecki | problem solver, scholar, BOFH, | \ / Campaign Against
                  | vegetarian, runner, NetBSD     |  X  Exchange, Outlook
                  | advocate, spiritual machine }; | / \ & HTML Email

"From listening comes wisdom and from speaking repentance."