[Info-vax] USB or SCSI TAPE

[Eberhard Heuser]

Am 10.09.2014 um 15:12 schrieb Rod Regier via Info-vax:
> I have wandered thru the available documentation for OpenVMS and related threads on OpenVMS USB support.  All of the information I can find is that there is no OpenVMS driver support for USB tape drives on any of the Integrity family servers.
>
> As of 09-Nov-2011 (V/I64 8.4) HP only officially supports keyboard, mouse and optical media boot as USB devices.
>
> No mention is made for USB R/W mass storage devices like disks or DAT drives.
>
> Too bad, USB DAT drives are the wave of the future.
>
> In a related vein:
>
> The HP employee who wrote the USB device driver says on the topic of boot from R/W USB mass storage:
>
> "...it had been slipped in by Fred (Kleinsorge) a parting gift on
> |his way out.  I only have read only access to comp.os.vms.  Can you
> |post a note saying the official position is that USB booting is only
> |suppoted for the systems that have USB DVD's.  That is it and no one
> |will lift a finger to help beyond that.  There is no magic required to
> |boot a VMS system off a USB pen drive or disk drive.  You need to back
> |up a working system to the device and make sure that the boot block
> |gets updated.  That is it, for DVD's you have to set the sysgen
> |paramter write lock sys to boot.
> |
> |    If it hangs in the boot in mount verify the run time drivers are
> |having a problem with the device, there is a complex dance that
> |happens to determine data about the disk.  In fact Fred rewrote much
> |of it about 12-16 months ago to make it work with more devices.  That
> |code should be in recent patch kits.
> |
> |     But if that does not help they will get nothing out of HP there
> |is no one home who understands how it all works.  There is a complex
> |set of steps and interlocks that all have to go correct to boot off a
> |USB mass storage device any one messes up and you hang or crash.  It
> |took me weeks to make it all work the first time and even then it was
> |fragile."
>
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"USB DAT drives are the wave of the future"

I've got very unhappy with DAT-drives because the tapes are often not 
transferable from one drive to the other (this is
a intrinsic error of the technique of the DAT-system.).  LTO + SAS is 
more reliable in my experience.

I decided to use optical media (i.e. Blu-Ray). There are media that 
promise 1000 years readability (that should be enough...).

Eberhard