[Info-vax] Exabyte tapes to disk

Bob Gezelter gezelter at rlgsc.com
Fri Aug 28 14:22:42 EDT 2009


On Aug 28, 11:14 am, Chris <cdandre... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We have 8mm exabyte tapes with archived data on them. Our old vax
> machines could read/write these tapes with no problem with exabyte
> tape drives (SCSI connection). We would like to get the data off of
> these tapes and eventually onto disks (so that the data is more easily
> accessible, don't have to mess with tape drives etc.). However,
> whenever we use our vax to copy the data to disk, the files are not
> readable by other machines (e.g. there is a bunch of garbage before
> the data). We have been unable to find a way to use any other machine
> to copy the data from the tape to disk. Has anyone had any success
> with something like this? What worked?
>
> Thanks for all your help,
> Chris

Chris,

Without examining the data on the tape, or knowing what commands were
used to create the tape, divining how to retrieve data from the tape
is an exercise in guesswork. Put simply, there are many ways that the
tape could have been written.

I recommend mounting the tape /NOWRITE/FOREIGN, use the DUMP/HEX/
BLOCK=COUNT:100)/OUTPUT=<some file name> and have someone familiar
with the possibilities examine the resulting dump file [Disclosure:
This is within our area of practice, as it is for several other
regular contributors to this forum].

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com



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