General SCSI+DLT speed questions

Yes, approximately, though, depending on exactly how this "buffer" works, it may not be. It is. Blocking factors in tar go back at least to 4.2 and I think to 4.1c. However, a blocking factor as high as 16 megabytes will exceed many tar's capacities (especially older versions). Furthermore, many tape drives are not streams of variable-sized tape records with interspersed tape marks (which is the model Unix tapes are designed around - roughly speaking, 9-track reel-to-reel tapes), but are instead streams of fixed-sized tape blocks with interspersed tape marks. (QIC tapes are notable for this.) On such drives, the blocking factor does not actually affect what ends up on the tape (as long as it's a multiple of the block size, at least). Many (most?) tar implementations will cheerfully take the stream of records such a drive returns as a valid tar archive; I'm not sure whether I consider this fortunate or not - I can see arguments each way. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B