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Tape Drives



Bill Vermillion's Tape Articles-Part 5 The QIC tape format brought tape backups into the small machines. Prior to that you had the large tape transports you see in old movies with 10" reels of 1/2" tape. These were just extension of the reel-reel design with rather sophisticated tape handling mechanisms for high-speed movement and extreme acceleration movements - using air-bearings and vacuum chambers. They were not cheap, but disk drives and their removable packs were very expensive too.


Title Date Comments
Using Tapes and tape drives   1998 09 
- Tapes and Tape Drives -
Reading SCO tapes on Linux   2003 01 
- Reading SCO tapes on Linux -
Tape Autoloader on 2.4 Linux   2003 01 
- Rob Fantini explains how he got an autoloader tape unit working on RedHat Linux This info may not be clearly written, but shows what I did to get autoloaders working on 2.4 linux. -
tapealert messages -->   1997-2004 
- Reading TapeAlert messages with Microlite Edge or smartctl -
Tape Drive or CDROM Not Found   2002 10 
- sco tape drive not seen troubleshooting solutions -
Super Tars   1998 12 
- General overview of Unix/Linux supertar backup -
Tape Errors - Openserver 5.0.7   2005 06 
- Having trouble with an IDE tape drive - Dell Powervault 100T (Travan 20/40 Gb drive). -
Transfer SCO Acucobol to Linux   2004 06 
- The customer also told me that everything was written in Acucobol, and that he had source code too, and he had already bought Acucobol run-time for Linux -
travan   2004 01 
- These are very inexpensive tape drives with a horrible reputation for quality. The tapes are expensive, because that's where all the engineering is. -
AIT   2004 01 
- The interesting thing about this technology is that the tape media has an EEPROM in it that stores information about the tape contents and more. -
Backups   2003 02 
- Compared to Windows, the world of Unix backup is extraordinarily rich. You have many tools available, from basic to quite complex and extensive. Knowing what tool to use is a challenge in itself. -
Bill Vermillion's Tape Articles-Part 5   2001 04 
- This section will talk about the evolution of tape backup systems for small computers, and discuss the fundamentals of rotating head tape recorders. In the next segment I'll try to go into more detail on the difference between each of the current types of data backup systems. -
 
 
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Bill Vermillion's Tape Articles-Part 4, QIC Tape Format   2001 01 
- This section will discuss the QIC method - and it's probably a good starting point as it's fairly easy to understand. The QIC [Quarter Inch Cartridge] is the data cartridge you have seen which measures about 3" by 5", and with a metal bottom plate. This is a very rugged design and it's more complex mechanically than you'd notice with a casual glance. -
Bill Vermillion's Tape Articles-Part 3, Storage Media   2000 12 
- Tape Articles- Storage Media: This is the third installment of a series on magnetic devices and media used in computer systems. In this article we will look at the storage media, primarily tape and disk, and how signals are represented on that media. To better understand this I will compare the differences in audio tape, as most people are most familiar with that, and digital tape. -
Bill Vermillion's Tape Articles-Part 2, Recording and Playback Heads   2000 12 
- A recording head is a horseshoe magnet taken to the extreme. The difference is that the open end of a recording head is extremely small. The easiest way to understand a very basic recording head is take a ring of metal, and cut a very small slot through it. Then we wrap some turns of wire around this ring on the side opposite the slot. Connect the wire it to an electron source, we will have a magnet with the magnetic field focused at that very small gap opposite the coil of wire. -
Bill Vermillion's Tape Articles-Intro- Magnetism and Electrons   2000 12 
- Tape Articles Intro- Magnetism and Electrons. Because of the processes involved and to make sure that everyone has at least the level of knowledge to understand this, I'll start by explaining the basic fundamental concepts that relate to this technology. -
Bill Vermillion's Tape Articles   2000 12 
- -
A Potential Disaster Using CPIO   2000 07 
- A Potential Disaster Using CPIO by Ron Kopp -
SCO_OSR5 Tape Autoloaders   2000 05 
- OSR5 Tape Autoloaders -
Using Unixware 7 Tape Drives   1998 08 
- Unlike Openserver, you don't specifically add SCSI tapes. If the tape is out there (controller configured, of course), it will automagically get added to the kernel. -
I can't read a cpio archive created on a Linux box- it fails with premature end of file   1997-2003 
- I can't read a cpio archive created on a Linux box -
How do I configure a Travan Tape Drive?   1997-2003 
- Travan tape drives caused me a lot of problems. They were cheap, so many SCO systems used them. Often they were unable to restore data. -
tape backup append -->Re sco-list One Tape Drive many machines- Restore RootFS   1997-2004 
- tape backup append -->Re: sco-list: One Tape Drive manymachines- Restore RootFS -
ONStream tape drives -->Re need suggested tape drivereplacement for Exabyte 8505 on OS 5.0.0C - plug and play,please!   1997-2004 
- ONStream tape drives Exabyte 8505 will not work with Unix! -
dd block sizes tape compression   1997-2004 
- dd block sizes tape compression -
tape blocksize compression -->Re Tape DriveProblems   1997-2004 
- tape blocksize compression -->Re: Tape DriveProblems -
Linux ide tape drive name /dev/ht0   1997-2004 
- If the device is installed as a secondary master, the kernel will initially spit out some message pertaining to /dev/hdd and you can use /dev/hdd as a parameter to 'hdparm' to turn on/off DMA, etc. But /dev/hdd is a block device for reading/writing to hard drives. You cannot talk to your tape that way...it's also known as /dev/ht0 (assuming its the first or only tape drive in the system). /dev/ht0 is what you need to use. (Unless it's been setup with IDE-SCSI emulation, in which /dev/st0 is what you need.) -
why not compress and then dd to tape backup?   1997-2004 
- What's wrong is that you've compressed the the whole archive and then written out to a media that can have bit errors. If there is a problem, you lose the entire archive. That's the warning that you'll find in the aforementioned faqs. There's also the obvious limitation that you can't grab a particular file from that tape. -
dd to and from tape; using diff to compare   1997-2004 
- The problem with using dd for this is the differing blocks- notice you get 288 full blocks plus a PARTIAL block going out to the tape, but the tape can only give you full blocks back. - therefore there is null data in the read, and that naturally won't pass diff. -
bit level bit-level verify backup -->Re systembackup   1997-2004 
- You'd probably be surprised how often a bit level verify proves useful. As Bill does, I receive backup status email for several of my clients, so I can tell you that bit-level verification "failures" ( failure of one or more files to match the hard drive- not a complete backup failure) are not all that uncommon. Once in a while it's due to incipient tape failure, and it's very helpful to see a problem developing before it gets serious- if we're lucky the really important files aren't the ones the tape had trouble with. -
tape eject -->Re Ejecting tape in UW   1997-2004 
- Ejecting tapes on various operating systems. Don't forget the paper clip if all else fails! -
dat tape ejects -->Re I can't find something.   1997-2004 
- You need to remove the /dev/rStp0 and recreate it with 'mknod /dev/rStp0 c 46 4' -
colorado jtape -->Re 3.2v4.2 + Colorado 250 tapedrive   1997-2004 
- colorado jtape -->Re: 3.2v4.2 + Colorado 250 tapedrive -
tape drive doesn't work -->Re Tape Drive   1997-2004 
- If it NEVER worked, you haven't configured it properly: wrong ID, wrong controller, or wrong bus. -
Eject dat tape hp drive -->Re Tape Busy   1997-2004 
- Eject dat tape hp drive -->Re: Tape Busy -
warnings vs. notices   1997-2004 
- My memory of this is that it happens every time the drive is accessed. I've never been able to convince a customer to just "ignore it" though.. -
obdr tapes -->Re SCSI tape drives - DDS - OBDR &Stuff   1997-2004 
- The original "DAT" drives were just that. They used DIGITAL AUDIO TAPE. There were no standards, and vendors tended to use different compression methods. Cross vendor compatibility was almost nil. -
overwritten tape   1997-2004 
- Is it possible to restore an accidentally overwritten tape? -
tape storage   1997-2004 
- If you upgrade to DDS-3 or DDS-4 it will be just drop-in replacement with the ability to read your old tapes and only having to configure your backup programs to be aware of the larger size. -
tape reached end of media compression setcomp getcomp-->Re Tape Drive Failure out of the blue   1997-2004 
- DDS tape drive capacity by lenth of tape; enabling compression -
corrupt data tape -->Re Big Trouble with tape &cpio   1997-2004 
- Understanding data corruption and media problems on tape drives.0 -
tape write performance -->Re scsi bus bottleneck??????   1997-2004 
- Notes on tape performance and the effects of file system performance on backups0 -
tape MRS -->Re HP SureStore 8i Problems with 5.0.5   1997-2004 
- Can you use audio tapes for data storage backup? What is MRS? -
 
 
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