Archiving Projects-- TAPE vs. DVD

[justin gedge]

Nicholas Leippe wrote:

>On Thursday 09 February 2006 14:42, justin gedge wrote:
>  
>
>>Is there a good way [IE a program available] to take this and divide it
>>up cleanly so it could span 2 DDS3 tapes, or 10 DVD's if needed.  I'm
>>kind of thinking about how linux distros- you'll have 1-2 DVD's or 6-7
>>CD's and they're structured so you could look at individual disks-- or
>>combine them all back together if you have the drive space available.
>>This is something that has plagued me since I started here.  You
>>typically trim as much fat out of a project before you archive-- but as
>>time goes on they're getting bigger and bigger.  2GB just isn't what it
>>use to be.  I can obviously move to larger capacity tapes-- but I've
>>wondered if there wasn't a nice program to help divide file trees up so
>>they could span multiple media-- but still be readable as independent
>>media.
>>    
>>
>
>tar can split an archive across multiple volumes.
>
>  
>
from the gnu tar manpage--

       -L, --tape-length N
              change tapes after writing N*1024 bytes

You can split the archive across multiple tapes [good to know], but I'd 
like something that takes the N*1024, and splits up the archive at the 
nearest file boundary.  I'm thinking of the case where you split over 
several DVD's-- although it would work well for CD's, tapes etc...

Justin Gedge