On Wed, 2005-06-08 at 16:11 -0700, Andy Ross wrote: > I wrote: > > Apparently tar implements sparse files by simply detecting and > > condensing large blocks of zeros in the input file, which means that > > it has to actually read all 1.2TB of nothingness to do its job. > > > > It's been working for 52 minutes now on my 1.8GHz Athlon64 laptop. I > > have no idea how much longer I will be waiting. > > Just for the record: 1h48m46s to generate a 10240 byte output file. > > Andy > How long does it take without using --sparse (and compressing the output, I suppose)? /Mike