26 Apr
2014
26 Apr
'14
7:31 p.m.
On 04/26/2014 06:12 PM, Robert Jarratt wrote:
Just dd under UNIX & friends. I've no idea if there's something similar for
VMS.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Jules Richardson
Sent: 26 April 2014 23:42
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Checking Contents of Unknown Disks
On 04/26/2014 03:21 PM, Robert Jarratt wrote:
block
I have some SCSI disks with unknown contents
which I would like to
check before overwriting them. I don't even know what OS they were
used with. The only systems I have to hand with SCSI are MicroVAXen,
so I can check them for VMS format without issue. However, for the
ones that are not VMS format I would need a way to find out what format
they are.
I don't know what facilities VMS gives you, but I normally drag the first off an unknown disk and just look at it in a hex
editor.
What tools do you use to get the raw blocks? The SCSI disks I am most interested in tend to be the
narrow ones anyway,
but thanks for the suggestion about the UW model. When I looked at the other
models I thought I saw SCSI-1 support missing, but on double checking the UW
model does support it, so UW definitely looks better. I think the 29160
looks pretty good too in terms of flexibility, although I can't quite tell
from the specs if it will handle the older disks.
Yes, I don't remember for sure now, either. I had a PC with a 29160 and a
2940UW in - I think it may have been that the 29160's external connector
was LVD, which was no good for my external tape streamer, but the 29160
gave better performance for the internal drives. If you're just reading old
disks then performance isn't really an issue - the 2940UW would be plenty
fast enough.
cheers
Jules