HOWTO_Backup_to_Laser_Servo_Diskettes

Creating a tar backup onto LS120 laser servo diskettes

These notes relate to the creation and restoration of raw tar backups on LS120 laser servo diskettes. To backup a directory and and subdirectory entries onto LS120 diskettes:

cd /directorytobackup tar -cvfk /dev/hdd 123264 .

Where /directorytobackup is the directory to backup, and /dev/hdd is the LS120 device.

Restoring from a tar backup on LS120 laser servo diskettes

To restore from a previous backup made using the above method:

cd /directorytorestore tar -xvfk /dev/hdd 123264 .

Where /directorytorestore is the directory to restore to, and /dev/hdd is the LS120 device.

Beware of buggy tar variants

To utilize a laser servo diskette drive for multivolume backups, it is necessary to install the heirloom variant of tar. There is currently a serious bug in gnutar, which prevents a multivolume backup from being restored.