You misunderstand the direction I'm going. I have magtape with data already on it. I want to extract that data into a file or set of files on the disk that I can then burn to CD-R. I can use dd to move raw records, but I would like to also know what the block size was for a particular file so I could reconsitute the tape later if necessary. I'm not so worried about the VMS BACKUP tapes I need to spin off - I want one saveset per file. If I want to dup any install tapes (non-VAX), the blocking becomes more critical. Essentially, a physical backup that is primarily for data recovery, but secondarily for later restoration. I do not intend to use magtape as a primary backup media for Linux or Solaris. Writing tape is not a concern here, only reading. I do know how to operate dump/restore, tar, etc. They are of _no_ use