Hello CHARLES.

12 Dec 03 13:18, you wrote to me:

 CA> As it is now, I would avoid tape like the plague.

Yeah, since i got my first cdwriter i thrown the tape drive away and never
regreted it :)


 VP>> Also, someone mentioned tar being able to work wihout a
 VP>> filesystem, actually almost any program under linux that
 VP>> stores it's stuff into one file can wotk directly with
 VP>> devices (w/o a FS) try ZIPing something to /dev/fd and it
 VP>> will work fine.

 CA> I'm not so sure what the "no filesystem" is meant to describe
 CA> but I do know that unformatted media whether it be tape,
 CA> floppies, or a hard drive will not accept a write operation
 CA> under any OS I can think of. Burning files to a CD is a
 CA> possible exception as the 'format' and the file are moved
 CA> simultaneously to the media in one operation unless it's a CDRW
 CA> CD and in that case it must be formatted prior to any write
 CA> operations.

 CA> MSDOS (and others) can also redirect output to a file using
 CA> stdout and read the file back using stdin once the media has
 CA> been formatted.

First of all formating operation and filesystems are not the same thing -
under *nix anyway. You format a floppy with fdformat and then you create a
filesystem on it with mke2fs/mkfat/whatever. And if the media is formated
but there is no filesystem on it, programs can use the whole device as 1
big file, ie

if you would store a text file on a floppy directly then

vi /dev/fd

would allow you to edit it.

The filesystem is just a layer between a program and the real hardware
which can be bypassed if need arises.

Viktor

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