Richard, You'll have to forgive me for being a bit blunt, but I know all about the various factors involved in restore rates. This is why my message stated: <snip> "assuming the tape drive is the bottleneck, ie. disk is fast enough, bus is wide enough, everything is local attached, machine is super zippy, and restoring BIG files." <snip> I'm making various assumptions here about the rest of the scenario to indeed make the streaming speed of the tape the bottleneck. I'm not concerned with small files, bus speeds, disk speed, anything else. I've spent a great deal of time messing with those various factors. At the moment my primary concern is 3590e performance in its own right, all other factors being equal. I understand that all other factors are not always equal. I'll take responsibility for that side of the equation. Please don't get the wrong idea, I have great respect for your input, information you have provided on this list has helped me in many situations. I'd just appreciate it if you'd look at little bit more closely at the message as I have worded it. Now, that being said, my question still stands.... Paul
