Tape backup performance on 386 ISA/EISA systems

[Conor P. Cahill]

In article <1990May26..841 at rdk386.uucp> ron at rdk386.UUCP (Ron Kuris) writes:
>In article <1990May25.123302.26061 at virtech.uucp> cpcahil at virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill) writes:
>> [ stuff deleted ]
>Seems to me like you're not taking into account filesystem fragmentation
>or a bunch of other factors.  How about running a disk optimizer (e.g.
>shuffle) before you start the test?  I've noticed a dramatic increase due
>to less head activity (I don't have numbers handy).

For several reasons:

1. There are no commercial disk optimzers for UNIX (at least that I know of)
and most people, myself included, cringe at the thought of letting someone's
program hunt around my raw disk patching things together.  I'm not saying
that the programs are bad. I'm just saying that it will take a lot more
than a simple post to alt.sources to get me to run one of those programs
on my production systems.  Anyway, I can't ask people to run one when they
may not even have it.

2. The performance of the disk due to optimizations will probably have
little performance effect on the overall perforance on the tape write, since
the tape write is the limiting factor.

-- 
Conor P. Cahill            (703)430-9247        Virtual Technologies, Inc.,
uunet!virtech!cpcahil                           46030 Manekin Plaza, Suite 160
                                                Sterling, VA 22170