[net.unix-wizards] system backups through pipes

ddj (04/22/83)

Full backups require that the filesystem be quiescent, hence
no users.  Therefore you are not timesharing as such, and any
lost I/O time is lost time.  The cpu has nothing to do anyway.

Perhaps the filesystem improvements coming in 4.2bsd will help
dump/restor (and tar), though I'm sure the user code could stand
some improvement in any case.