Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!udel!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Tape backups and Disk management
Message-ID: <12217@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 23 Feb 90 09:17:02 GMT
References: <9782@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 16

In article <9782@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> rogerj@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Roger Jagoda) writes:
-Now, the same problem exists under UNIX, but with
-DOS systems I have my choice of 6 or 7 GOOD disk managers/defragmentors.
-Under UNIX, there doesn't seem to be ANYTHING ...

dump; mkfs; restore

(or equivalent)

-BTW, what does "dd" do so well that people
-tell me I should use that for tape backup instead? The man page clearly
-shows it for a file conversion utility, such as EBSIDIC to ASCII. Why
-would I want to use this in tape backups?

"dd" is not an archiver at all!  However, it does give you control
over I/O blocking, which is significant for magtape.