[Info-vax] Backup A Dying Disk.

[Jerry Weiss]

On Wednesday, March 18, 2015 at 7:07:28 PM UTC-5, BillPedersen wrote:
> ok, one of the issues that has not been addressed here is the use of the TK70.  Were you backing up directly to tape?  If so then I suspect anytime you received an error you then were penalized by the TK70 stop/start/"try to stream" operation.
> 
> I think you might have had better luck, if you had the available space, just doing a backup to a saveset and then copying the saveset file to the tape.
> 
> But, not having been there it is impossible to say exactly what all the issues were.
> 
> BUT, in general, it is better to backup to an FILE on a DISK rather than tape based upon the issues of tape start/stop times.  The newer streaming tapes are even more problematic than the old multi-track reel to reel...
> 
> Bill.

I didn't use a tape drive for the recovery. All the transfers were disk (bad RD54) to disk (good uc07/scsi).   Error logging on the bad drive disabled as well.  

The reference to the tape drive was my daydreaming about getting the diagnostic loaded to reformat the RD54 drive.   It looks like I would either need to build tape or install it on my MV3100 and netboot from that.   I have a copy of the I believe its called the MicroVAX Diagnostic Monitor (MOM)  software, but I don't know how to set it up for either method.