[daip] Moving data from backup tapes to a machine with no tape drive?

[Susan Neff]

Hi Eric et al.,

   I am about to move off of my 6 year old Sun workstation onto a G5 
PowerMac.  For the last 10+ years, I've backed up my AIPS data on Exabyte 
tapes.  The G5 apparently does not support Exabytes, and Exabytes are 
also apparently becoming hard to buy / maintain.  So, I want to 1) move 
some of the data I currently have on my Sun to the G5, 2) backup all 
the AIPS data currently on the Sun in a format I will be able to read on 
the G5 in the future, and 3) convert my backup tapes to something I'll 
be able to use in the future without a tape drive.  I'm looking for 
advice on how to do this with as little pain as possible (note I am 
not expecting painless...).

   I'm hoping that you have already addressed this situation and I just 
don't haven't found the right application in AIPS.  If that's not 
the case, here is *a* way I think I could do this:  

1) If data is not already on the Sun, load it into AIPS from tape using 
   FITLD.  (It seems to me that theoretically I should be able to copy a
   FITS tape directly to a CD/DVD, given the definition of FITS - but I
   don't know how to do that outside of a data reduction language (AIPS,
   IRAF, fv, ...)

2) Write it out to disk (probably CD/DVD), using FITTP.  My concern about 
   this is that as far as I know and can tell, FITTP will only write one 
   file at a time to disk.  So, for e.g. a dataset with 100 files, I'd need 
   set up a run file or loop to write all files out.  Is there a program
   or way to use FITTP that will write multiple FITS files to disk?  I
   would also need to buy a CD writer for my Sun to do this.

3) Read the data in to AIPS on the MAC from the CD/DVD as if it were a 
   normal disk file.  Or possibly cross-mount the disks between Sun/Mac
   and just pull across network.


  An alternate possibility: I read memo # 109, which sounded like I might be 
able to use a CD/DVD as just another AIPS disk which could be dismounted / 
remounted on another machine.  This sounded more like it was for actually 
processing data than for transporting it, but I was wondering if it would be 
possible to use this somehow for data transfer - perhaps reading data from tape 
(on the Sun) and loading it onto the CD/DVD.  Again, this would require me to 
buy a CD/DVD reader/writer for the Sun, but if it would work it would problably 
be less error-prone than what I described above.  I don't know if I can mount 
this type of CD/DVD on my (old) Sun. 

Will either of these work?  Do you have suggestions to make things go faster or 
with less intervention by me?  (I have > 100 Exabytes to upgrade). 


Thanks very much,
-s-