As it turns out, Farva has been doing the tape backup at 25% efficiency for a full year, because (his direct response) “I didn’t really think about it.”

Five minutes of questioning and checking showed that the 4-tape vs 16-tape mode had no differences. i.e., 16 tapes was not 4x as slow, using the database is actually useful, relevant, etc.

To be fair, RVM didn’t give a rat’s ass about the backup and had no initiative or desire to learn or teach it when he left. (He was Farva’s teacher for this.)

So, everything we did yesterday when Farva was explaining the backup system turns out to be wrong and irrelevant. As with all things touched by Farva (or RVM), better to just start from scratch.