23 Mar
2015
23 Mar
'15
4:21 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Taylor" <dj.taylor4 at verizon.net>
To: <General at classiccmp.org>; "Discussion at classiccmp.org:On-Topic
Posts"
<cctech at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2015 4:46 PM
Subject: Recovering data from 4mm and 8mm tapes
I have a couple of 4mm and 8mm tapes that contain data
I want to recover.
The 4mm is DDS-1 and was written using tar on a SGI system in 1998. My
questions are;
'What modern DAT tape drive will read this tape? How backward compatible
is this technology?'
The 8mm tapes were also written on an SGI system, however it was in 1994
and the IRIX Backup utility was used. IRIX 5 was probably used. Any
ideas?
DDS-1 can normally be read on DDS-2, in my experience. I seem to remember
that Sony and HP DDS drives of that generation are not totally
interchangeable, especially for the compression routines. But I might
confuse it with some other system.
Are the 8 mm tapes Exabyte format? Exabyte drives are normally 1 or 2
versions upwards compatible, so you can read 8200 tapes on 8500 drives, but
probably not on Eliant drives, etc.
I have now idea on how IRIX handled the backup.
/Nico