Tape Storage for Dummies

This is an open letter to my Northern Brother-in-Scrap, Bruce Lane, 'cause I know he's done this... and I thought maybe others will have (or soon have) these questions too... Okay.. I realize now that all of my 20+ years of computer experience has been on disk-based systems... and I am having some fundamental-concept problems in understanding the basics of Tape, as it is implemented under VMS (and maybe RT-11 too, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it). On my now beautifully working uVAX II (thanks again Allison!) I have a Cipher 9trk and a TK50... I have the MIcro VMS User's Manuals VOL I & II. I understand the concept of mounting the devices and allocating them (sort of), and I have successfully loaded, mounted, allocated, and initialized a roll of tape on the Cipher. I have made a Test directory on the HD called [TEST] ;} on which I have created a couple of simple text files. I have tried to copy these files to the tape (MSA0:), and it does *something*, the tape advances and the HD led flickers, but when I try to copy these files back, all I get are sequentially numbered blank directory entries. I mounted/foreign an RT-ll sig tape, and tried to copy it to the HD; same thing. Show/Dev/MSA0: shows the right Volume Label.. but the directories are empty when I copy them back... I am lacking in the basic understanding of how the tape system works, so I thought to ask my Firends and Listmembers. Cheers John