Tape for Data Makes a Comback

[hank alrich]

http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21590758-information-
storage-60-year-old-technology-offers-solution-modern

--
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[Frank Stearns]

(hank alrich) writes:

>http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21590758-information-
>storage-60-year-old-technology-offers-solution-modern

Ah, what's old is new again. Thanks for posting, Hank.

This reminds me -- I have a boatload of 6150 and 6250 cartridge tapes created with
one of two SCSI tape drives I still have. These are mostly backups from the old Sun
workstation. All should have been ported over to PC land years ago, but there are
a few little data chunks that would be nice to finally find.

There are lots of USB-SCSI adaptors out there (most with mixed results); curious if
anyone has used one that's been a good performer.

More than that is the question of SW. I have a TAR app that should be good for the
tapes, but I also have an old 327 MByte SCSI drive from 1991 that actually spun up
recently and I heard the heads do their normal thing. It'd be really cool to access
that drive -- question is how can I read an old Sun file system? I'm not even sure
what flavor it is...

Suggestions welcome; thanks in advance.

Frank
Mobile Audio
--

[Scott Dorsey]

Frank Stearns > wrote:
>
>There are lots of USB-SCSI adaptors out there (most with mixed results); curious if
>anyone has used one that's been a good performer.

I have not, but those drives will be SCSI-I so the performance is not a huge
deal. I'd just put a PCI SCSI card in there personally, they are nearly free
items on ebay now.

>More than that is the question of SW. I have a TAR app that should be good for the
>tapes, but I also have an old 327 MByte SCSI drive from 1991 that actually spun up
>recently and I heard the heads do their normal thing. It'd be really cool to access
>that drive -- question is how can I read an old Sun file system? I'm not even sure
>what flavor it is...

If it's a tar file, it will be readable by modern gnu tar. Tar format
actually changed some time in the nineties, but gnutar will read both new
and old formats.

If it's a tar file, it's filesystem independant. If it's a dump or a
cpio file, on the other hand, it might be filesystem dependent but the
good news is that SunOS just used the ordinary Berkeley filesystem which
can be mounted directly on any linux system with FUSE installed.

>Suggestions welcome; thanks in advance.

The number one suggestion that I make is never, ever buy a helical scan
tape drive. My number two suggestion is that you never expect to get
reliable data off a helical scan tape drive...
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Frank Stearns]

(Scott Dorsey) writes:

-snips-

>If it's a tar file, it will be readable by modern gnu tar. Tar format
>actually changed some time in the nineties, but gnutar will read both new
>and old formats.

Good to know, thanks.

>If it's a tar file, it's filesystem independant. If it's a dump or a
>cpio file, on the other hand, it might be filesystem dependent but the
>good news is that SunOS just used the ordinary Berkeley filesystem which
>can be mounted directly on any linux system with FUSE installed.

Sweet. Of course that's the case (I should have remembered); should make things
doable.

>>Suggestions welcome; thanks in advance.

>The number one suggestion that I make is never, ever buy a helical scan
>tape drive. My number two suggestion is that you never expect to get
>reliable data off a helical scan tape drive...

No kidding. Horror story after horror story -- those things were worse than abused
hard drives, especially as the "density wars" took hold... Self-erasure, alignment
and tracking problems, etc, etc. DAT problems on steroids (given that DATs *are*
helical data drives, but perhaps slightly more forgiving -- but not by much). Data
might have been recoverable for six months, but after that, good luck.

Thankfully, those old 1/4" data tape carts were fixed head -- 4 track? 6 track? I
forget -- and relatively low density.

Frank
Mobile Audio
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