Since the data is always sequential on a tape, read/write speed (in my experience) ends up way faster than hard drives. And average positioning time is about 5

Since the data is always sequential on a tape, read/write speed (in my experience) ends up way faster than hard drives. And average positioning time is about 50 seconds or so. The trick is to have good software that records a few gigs in each write session, and keeps a database of which file/version is in which session. Then it only takes a couple minutes to restore any particular file (average positioning time, plus average time to get to a file within a segment). One thing I've done, without special software, when I've had to archive an entire system on a tape is: 1) Use "find" to make an index of all files to backup, splitting it up in approx. 2GB segments 2) Tar each segment in a separate session 3) Create a tar at the end of the tape with the index from step 1. The first write session of the tape contains a tar file with a README describing how to get the data (seek to the end of tape, back up one session, restore the index, then use that to position the tape to the session with the desired file). Also included was the shell scripts used to create the tape, along with a script to automate restoring a given list of files.