Restoring a disk image (sector clone of a whole disk) is the fastest way to get back up and running, and my prefered backup method. In fact, it is the sole reason I bought a SCSI tape drive, since accessing an IDE tape drive from DOS requires ASPI drivers that most IDE tape drive manufacturers seem reluctant to provide. Why? I have no idea. Anyway here's the question.
What backup software will enable me to dump a disk image to tape from an environment *other* than DOS? Specifically Linux or Windows XP.
I can use Symantec Ghost to dump/restore disks to tape - but during the operation the computer is locked to that single task (since it's in DOS) and means I can't use it for x number of hours while it backs up.
What I need is disk imaging software that works either within Windows or Linux *and* recognises and uses my tape drive.
Here's what I've tried so far, without success:
Ghost - Does also work within Windows, but only "sees" my tape drive when running in DOS. Is this because Ghost for Windows only writes to media with a drive letter? Maybe. It seems bizarre to me that Ghost for DOS has tape support, but Ghost for Windows doesn't. Anyone know why?
Acronis TrueImage - same thing, except not even a DOS mode (that I could find).
dd - Linux disk dump. *Will* dump disks to tape, but unfortunately I can't figure out how to compress the dump using tar *without* creating an intermediary file. I.e.:
dd if=/dev/sda | tar cvzb 64 -f /dev/st0 -
Won't work, since tar does not work with data-streams but real files only. I know the ADR50 does hardware compression anyway - but how do I control this with dd - and how do I control the blocksize?
Would:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/st0 bs=32
work ok?
What about switching on hardware compression? or is this "always on" unless flagged "off"?
Back to the "tar" method (which is probably flogging a dead horse, but ...), could I use some sort of Virtual Filesystem with fifo files/named pipes to "simulate" real files for tar to work with? E.g.:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/vfs/fifo.file && tar cvzb 64 -f /dev/st0 /mnt/vfs/fifo.file
Where /mnt/vfs is mounted from /dev/<some clever VFS> and fifo.file never grows bigger than xMB, and also the vfs uses a cache system to maintain a constant transfer rate.
I've tried something similar to this before using mkfifo, but standard *nix fifo files are purged the second you read them - I.e. they don't act as buffers, so you end up with broken pipes when you try using fifo files with tar.
Hope some Guru can answer this one. Even if the "tar" option is *really* doing things the hard way - just to satisfy my curiosity - I'd love to know if it is at all possible.
TIA,
[H]omer
What backup software will enable me to dump a disk image to tape from an environment *other* than DOS? Specifically Linux or Windows XP.
I can use Symantec Ghost to dump/restore disks to tape - but during the operation the computer is locked to that single task (since it's in DOS) and means I can't use it for x number of hours while it backs up.
What I need is disk imaging software that works either within Windows or Linux *and* recognises and uses my tape drive.
Here's what I've tried so far, without success:
Ghost - Does also work within Windows, but only "sees" my tape drive when running in DOS. Is this because Ghost for Windows only writes to media with a drive letter? Maybe. It seems bizarre to me that Ghost for DOS has tape support, but Ghost for Windows doesn't. Anyone know why?
Acronis TrueImage - same thing, except not even a DOS mode (that I could find).
dd - Linux disk dump. *Will* dump disks to tape, but unfortunately I can't figure out how to compress the dump using tar *without* creating an intermediary file. I.e.:
dd if=/dev/sda | tar cvzb 64 -f /dev/st0 -
Won't work, since tar does not work with data-streams but real files only. I know the ADR50 does hardware compression anyway - but how do I control this with dd - and how do I control the blocksize?
Would:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/st0 bs=32
work ok?
What about switching on hardware compression? or is this "always on" unless flagged "off"?
Back to the "tar" method (which is probably flogging a dead horse, but ...), could I use some sort of Virtual Filesystem with fifo files/named pipes to "simulate" real files for tar to work with? E.g.:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/vfs/fifo.file && tar cvzb 64 -f /dev/st0 /mnt/vfs/fifo.file
Where /mnt/vfs is mounted from /dev/<some clever VFS> and fifo.file never grows bigger than xMB, and also the vfs uses a cache system to maintain a constant transfer rate.
I've tried something similar to this before using mkfifo, but standard *nix fifo files are purged the second you read them - I.e. they don't act as buffers, so you end up with broken pipes when you try using fifo files with tar.
Hope some Guru can answer this one. Even if the "tar" option is *really* doing things the hard way - just to satisfy my curiosity - I'd love to know if it is at all possible.
TIA,
[H]omer