I've written a small script to help us to use AMANDA on removable disks. It is in use for 6 months and is helpful, so it may be useful for someone else too. :-)
It is on: https://info.enstb.org/projets/rire/documentation/amanda/amvtm/file_view Here is the in-line help: usage: ./amvtm [option [arguments]]+ revision of ./amvtm is amvtm,v 1.5 2007/09/28 14:01:16 keryell Exp AManda Virtual Tape Manager (amvtm) can manage a virtual tape infrastructure with tapes automatically numbered from begin to end for example. The use case is to have USB disks with few virtual tapes on them and to change a disk when it is full. The options: -b or --begin <n>: set the tape slot begin number. 1 by default -e or --end <n>: set the tape slot end number -n or --slot-number <n>: set the number of tape slot per disk, instead of specifying with -e -d or --disk <n>: set the disk number (starting at 0). The main idea is to allocate automatically slot numbers from -n and -d information -f or --format to partition and format the disk -m or --mount to mount the disk -u or --unmount to unmount the disk -t or --amtape arguments: use amtape for more specific tape control. This option must be the last one since all the remaining arguments are given to amtape --verbose: be more verbose (show issued svn commands) Examples: * To mount an old virtual tape disk: ./amvtm --mount * To unmount an old virtual tape disk before removing it: ./amvtm --unmount * To partition, format, mount and create 8 slots with 8 labeled virtual tapes on a new disk that is number 2 (note the order of the option is not important): ./amvtm --format --mount --create --slot-number 8 --disk 2 * To show the current tape content: ./amvtm -t show To display amtape short help: ./amvtm -t show -h At ENST Bretagne/RIRE we have 25 250 GB disks we have split in 8 virtual tapes each, that is 200 virtual tapes. We plug one disk in a USB2-SATA II rack and change it every 8 AMANDA runs. Our label names are of the form [EMAIL PROTECTED], that means the virtual tape 3 on disk 21 that was labeled on 28/09/2007 (to be able to have an idea of the age of the tape/disk) -- Ronan KERYELL |\/ Tel: (+33|0) 2.29.00.14.15 Département Informatique |/) Fax: (+33|0) 2.29.00.12.82 ENST Bretagne, CS 83818 K GSM: (+33|0) 6.13.14.37.66 F-29238 PLOUZANÉ CEDEX 3 |\ E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] FRANCE | \ http://enstb.org/~keryell sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED]