Destructive Imaging of DECTAPE II Media

[Al Kossow]

On 1/28/15 8:37 AM, Mark J. Blair wrote:
> I found the older posts about band installation and about restoring stretched bands with hot water. I do not recall, however, whether anybody has posted about successfully unsticking the band from the tape media without stripping oxide. That's something I'd sure like to know about!
>

http://www.hp9845.net/9845/tutorials/savetapes/ has an interesting discussion of the problems
of recovering DC-100 tapes but doesn't mention unsticking the tape. I'll keep digging. I suspect
it will be wetting the band at the point of contact with the tape. I'm guessing the safest way to
do this will be to cut the band and carefully lift the band and reels off of the hubs, then lay the
tape out flat on a paper towel and wet the parts that are stuck to the binder.

Like they say on the 9845 page, recovering some of the data is better than nothing, since there are
probably other copies somewhere with bad blocks in other places.