We are at a point where a number of our customer Firebird v1.0 GDBs
are 1 - 2 GB in size. The backups take +- 40 min and restores even
longer. The growth rate is fair and I expect the GDB size to be 6 - 8
gb in a couple of years. Is this going to mean a backup/restore cycle
of near 8 hours ? A lot of these operations are near 24/7 - 8 hours
is a lot of down time.

Archiving is not practical, but a must if the above will result. The
other option is to force these customers to get the latest P8 20 Ghz
( the futurer remember ) PC which will cost a fortune.

Does anyone know if multi-processors dramatically improve
backup/restore time ?

I read somewhere ( i think IBPhonix ) there is a 980 GB database in
operation. How do they even consider a backup/restore?

I would just like to know if there is some other approach people use
that I have not thought of?...

Thanks

Rod