On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 09:18:53AM -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> In message <20050511122013.GA46029@lori.mine.nu>, "Geert Hendrickx" writes:
> >Hi, 
> >
> >the manpage for restore says the following: 
> >
> >> The fastest way to extract a few files is to start with the last
> >> volume and work towards the first volume.
> >
> >I don't see why...  
> >
> 
> The backup directory is at the beginning of the first tape; restore
> looks up the inode numbers.  Each tape starts with a header saying
> what inode the tape start with.  Just looking at that header can tell
> you that the inode number you want isn't on that tape; it's too low.
> That saves the effort of reading that entire tape.

So, when you go from the first volume to the last, restore would argue:
the wanted inode number is bigger than the start-inode number of this
volume, so it _could_ be on this volume; let's look through it entirely.  
For each volume until the right one.  

Thanks!  

GH

-- 
:wq