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From: wyatt@cfa.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.sources.wanted,comp.periphs
Subject: Re: Wanted: filesystem driver - for hybrid tape disk media
Message-ID: <435@cfa.cfa.harvard.EDU>
Date: Fri, 20-Feb-87 12:48:41 EST
Article-I.D.: cfa.435
Posted: Fri Feb 20 12:48:41 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Feb-87 06:33:19 EST
References: <256@nzfish.UUCP>
Organization: Harvard-Smithsonian Ctr. for Astrophysics
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Xref: watmath comp.unix.wizards:1056 comp.sources.wanted:584 comp.periphs:220

> Wanted: filesystem emulator, part tape - part disk.
> 
>    Can such a thing run under vanilla Unix?  What we
> believe we want is to have an extra file system. For 
> example mounted as /arc. This extra filesystem would
> use physical space both on disk and on tape. [...]
>    There are a host of things that such a device handler
> "could" do, but basically making disk a 'buffer' between
> machine and tape would be enough, whether it buffered
> at block level or file level may not be all that important.

This kind of thing is done (only under VMS, so far as I know) by
various vendors' packages to run optical disks. I, for one, would love
to see something similar for UNIX, but apparently standards are a huge
problem still (both in the physical disk standards and in file system
organization). 

If anyone has/is writing such an interface, let us know!!

-- 

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