SUMMARY: HP DAT overwritten tape error recovery

From: Tom Kinter (tmk@mayo.edu)
Date: Fri Jun 30 2000 - 11:54:42 CDT


Sun Managers,

Thanks for all of the quick responses!

The question:
  I have an HP C5653A SurStore DAT24eU external tape drive attached to a
  SPARCstation 5 running Solaris-2.7. I had a tape filled with files
  containing data. Then, accidentally I wrote a file at the beginning of
  the tape. My thought is that if I could get past this file, I could get
  into the remaining good files and do some recovery. The problem is that
  I can't seem to get past this initial file. I tried the mt command to
  skip past filemarks and I tried a program usind open/read/ioctl to read
  records and skip filemarks. I always end up with an "I/O error" and it
  will not go any further than the first file. Are the any ways to get
  around this problem?

The general consensus:

  Send the tape to a data recovery company.

  The limitation is in the drive. Commercial drive units always write an
  EOT mark at the end of a write (later writes will erase that one and
  write another one). You cannot command a commercial unit to forward
  past the end of that EOT. (Darren Dunham)

A few suggested things like mt, GNU tar, cat /dev/rmt0, dd if=/dev/rmt0. But
the problem is still that I cannot get past the EOT.

Thanks to:
  Michael Connolly
  Darren Dunham
  Wendy Fong
  Ross Lonstein
  Frode Stromsvag
  Stuart Whitby
  Nasser Manesh

Tom
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Tom Kinter tmk@mayo.edu 507-284-4981
     Mayo Foundation Rochester MN 55905 USA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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