Hi Matt,

Sorry, I should have been more clear. My filer contains a tree of data that a web server serves up to the net. In a mass restore situation, I want to put the web server up right away on that small amount of data, and let the rest fill in in the background.

The idea here was that once we kicked off the restore, some data would be available right away, rendering the system 'up'. Proper balancing and placement of files on the filesystem would even ensure that the most important data came back first.

If that's your goal and you can identify what data is important to get back first it may be worth throwing this important data in a quota tree and backing it up separately. It may take more tape juggling to restore all your data, but you may be able to relax a little once you know you are serving the important data again. I say use a quota tree mainly to help with the backing up part, since in Data OnTap 5.1 we have optimized dumping full volumes and full quota trees.

Cheers, Grant