[ale] DAT Tape Data Recovery

[James P. Kinney III]

Hmm. Is it possible to dd from a tape device? That would give an output
file hat "file" can be run on to see what type of structure it is. Plus
it would make a copy of it.

Are you sure that the system that made that tape was a unix system? I've
run into several windows backup tape that are useless with out the
backup software. Sometimes it has been version specific.

On Wed, 2003-05-28 at 10:52, Jonathan Glass wrote:
> 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
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
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GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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