[callahan]

@weblacky -- Realizing folks often have strong opinions about Linux / BSD distros, one really nice thing about Ubuntu is that every release is still available from the original source. Also, xfsprogs is installed by default. You do have to add xfsdump, but since the apt repository is also still supported, that is super easy. To transfer data I just passed through a fat32-formatted USB drive to the guest and dropped files there. This seemed to work.

@robespierre -- The PCMCIA card seems to be the hard limit on bandwidth. I tried block sizes up to 4MB with no increase in performance. Larger blocks probably would work fine, but I like to stick with 512 byte block sizes 1) because I'm never fully sure how some of the archaic hardware will handle big blocks and 2) I regularly use SCIS2SD devices, which have a default block size of 512 bytes, so I don't have to do mental math to target the right sector.

Also -- I was able to get Hardy Herron working just fine, including testing xfsrestore on a xfsdump produced on a 6.5.22 Indy. Will update the post above with links and a few more details for posterity.