Matthew Miller wrote:
On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 04:37:32PM -0400, Michael Wiktowy wrote:
I don't really see that as being unreasonable. However, I don't have a
lot of experience with using tar to backup though. In your experience,
is there a reason not to use --sparse in most occasions?
It's probably somewhat slower to have to check if special handling is
needed.
Previous messages in this thread indicate:
- there is a small perfomance hit
- sparse files take a long time to compress (although they *do* compress
really well).
So it seems like there might be some time gain to be had if you are
ultimately compressing the tar. This seems like a typical thing to do.
Maybe --sparse should be assumed if a -z or -b is picked so that those
foolish novice system admins are not burned by a performance hit. This
is something that needs to be backed up with actual testing results
comparing the two methods.
Other than speed, are there other issues with assuming --sparse?
What are the reasons for explictly *not* using --sparse? Do checksums
get messed up?
/Mike