[Dump-users] exabyte 8500 parameters

[Greg T. <eve...@us...>]

what are reasonable values for blocksize, density, and feet for one of
these?  i have a legacy dumping script that uses 126, 54000, and 13000,
respectively, but none of those numbers make sense to me.  are density and
feet only used by dump to calculate how much data it can shove on a tape?
should i just use "-a" rather than try to figure them out?

blocksize: what value should i be using?  does it matter?  will i get better
throughput to the tapes if i pick some magic blocksize that's just right for
this drive?

density: i'm using mt to set the density code for the drive to 21 (0x15),
but i can't find anyplace that'll tell me what that corresponds to in bpi.

length: even though exabyte recommends against it, i'm using 160m XL tapes.
if m stands for meters, then that works out to just shy of 525 feet, which
is nowhere near the 13000 that someone put in this old script i'm using.
what's up with that?

any help would be appreciated.
--
		-greg