[ale] DAT Tape Data Recovery

[Jonathan Glass]

Good morning.

A researcher walked in this morning and handed me a Fuji Film "DG-90MAA"
(90Meter tape) and wants the data off of it.  I've tried tar, cpio,
dump/restore.  Any suggestions on what else to try?  I always backup
using tar, so my cpio and restore syntax may be wrong, but the fact that
I'm getting tape read errors from all three commands makes me nervous.

TIA

mt recognizes the tape:

# mt status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 512 bytes. Density code 0x13 (DDS (61000 bpi)).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (45010000):
 BOT WR_PROT ONLINE IM_REP_EN

But tar craps out:

# tar -tvf /dev/st0
tar: /dev/st0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

So does restore:

# restore rf /dev/st0
restore: Tape read error on first record

And cpio craps out, too.
# cpio  -i  -v  -C  32768  -d  -u  -m  -I  /dev/st0  "*"
cpio: read error: Input/output error
-- 
Jonathan Glass <jonathan.glass at ibb.gatech.edu>

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