>>> "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
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.