cpu usage for GTAR on alpha

[Uncle George]

i have a 160gig ide drive on my alpha. The drive is not terribly fast,
but apparently neither is the tar program that is going through the
992767 used inodes with 69gig disk space used.

the program top shows that tar has used up some 224 minuts, thus far,
with some 60megs of main memory.  cpu usage seems to be  in the range of
77% to 90%. This is a 533mhz processor.

Is there some reason why i am suffering so ?
Is there a remedy ( like an alternate sort algorithm ) ? for all the
files that i think you are storing in kore?

/gat

can u also email me directly, as i am not a part of this list. thanks