copy large file to tape

[Shawn Miller_2]

What is the best way to copy a large file to tape. Large being between 2GIG - 20GIG. It would be best if this tape can be read into either Solaris or HPUX since the people that are getting the tape might have either one. I am assuming dd would work. If that is the case is there any particular syntax I need to make this as quick a copy as possible, and also make it easy for someone else to copy back in.

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi,

Take a look at this thread John's method might be the one you are looking for.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=181759

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Ravi_8]

Hi

dd and tar has the limit of 2GB, gnu tar has the limit of 8GB. whereas your data is 2-20GB. I feel cpio suits.
by the way pushing the compressed data on to tape reduced the tape numbers

#find .|cpio -ocdv |compress >

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Cpio is limited to 2GB so it's not a good choice. I would not depend upon compress to solve my problems either because some data might not compress at all -- or at least not sufficiently.

I suppose the most portable method would be to choose Gnu tar (it's available for almost every platform). For the largefiles, I would use Gnu's bsplit (again, available on almost all platforms) to split largefiles into chunks before backup. The files can then be restored and cat'ed back together. When I absolutely, positively have to move data via tape between platforms this is the method that I fall back on.

[Geoff Wild]

What would work is an Enterprise Backup solution at both ends - like Veritas Netbackup.

You won't have any luck with standard tools between Sun and HP....

You will have to split the large files up into 2 GB chunks - unless you use GNU Tar - then 8GB would work.....

Rgds...Geoff

[Dave La Mar]

Shawn -
Attached is what was documented on a similar task request for us. (MS Word)

Best of luck.

Regards,

dl

[Jannik]

try to look at the sollution i found for a tar to more than one tape:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=47937

[Suresh Patoria]

Hi,

use the fbackup tool to take backup for large files more than 2 GB

Thanx

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
Tried this ?

#cat filename |cpio -ocdv |compress >

Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Florian Heigl (new acc) · Accepted solution]

We used split and tar when dealing with 35GB+ files and unknown 'target OS'.

dd also works (without 2gb limit, actually)