4 ms·

I would think you could just write the size at the end of the tape?

• ikawe 10y ago
  When you're reading the data later, how would you know where to find "the end" if you don't already know the length?
  • mnarayan01 10y ago
    You don't know the end of the data, but presumably(?) you know the end of the tape.
    • marcosdumay 10y ago
      We are talking past each other here... Making a backup with tar is done by typing something like that on bash: > tar -c - dir1 dir2 dir3 > /dev/tape That will (hopefully, I doubt I got the tar switches right) backup those dirs into the tape (that will actually have a weird name, not '/dev/tape'). Now, in practice Linux doesn't always know the size of a tape you inserted. But this is not the issue, if you accept the seeks needed for that, you'd better write at the beginning anyway.