I forgot to say that /dev/sd1a was NFS mounted to three other systems
(2 x OSF/1, 1 x FreeBSD) and that I let tar on one of the OSF/1 machines
back up /dev/sd1a via NFS. The backup completed normally. It is possible
that the NFS server was hitting /dev/sd1a in a big way, although I'm
inclined to think that tar would have finished by 1 am.

-- 
John Birrell                                CIMlogic Pty Ltd
jb@cimlogic.com.au                          119 Cecil Street
Ph  +61  3 9690 6900                        South Melbourne Vic 3205
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