[Info-vax] Backup TK50 tapes

[ChrisQ]

On 02/23/13 16:56, Dennis Boone wrote:
>   >  If you can find a TK50-Z scsi tape drive, you may be able to use
>   >  Linux / unix and dd to copy to files. There may also be later scsi
>   >  versions of TK50 drives as well.
>
> PLEASE don't use dd to image tapes.  If you go the route of finding
> a working drive and unix to image them, use something like tapeutils
> (http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/software/tapeutils/) which will
> produce images that don't just throw away the block structure of the
> tape.
>
> De

While i'm sure there are more modern utilities to copy tapes, providing
you know the block structure of the tape, dd should copy it verbatim,
even if you have to write a script to read it block by block.

With old media like tk50, just getting the data off the tape can be an
interesting challenge and that's assuming that you can even find working
hardware :-)...

Regards,

Chris