Recovering data from 4mm and 8mm tapes

[healyzh at aracnet.com]

On 2015-03-23 20:53, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 03/23/2015 06:38 PM, Roe Peterson wrote:
> Actually, with DDS tapes, you can generally write one gen back and read 
> two.  So, a DDS3 drive can read DDS1 and write DDS2.
> 
> It really depends.  Not all HP DDS3 drives will read DDS1--or so HP 
> claims.
> 
> So, it's still best to check beforehand.  Or do what I do--keep a mess
> of DDS drives of as many kinds as you need.  Nowadays, nobody wants
> the older ones much, so they can be had fairly inexpensively.

Not every DDS1 drive can read every DDS1 tape.  Not every DDS1 tape can 
be read in a different specimen of the same model drive as which it was 
written in.

I liked 4mm DDS1 tapes for installing software on my PDP-11, but that's 
about it.

Zane