Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 08:54:28 +0200 From: Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: tape (sa0) on sparc64 ? Message-ID: <5195D424.70302@gmx.de> In-Reply-To: <CACpH0Mfd0iQ1phmJ1V-3WzwtPsboPerBbyBTCVWJZ3E1f9pgLg@mail.gmail.com> References: <CACpH0Mcass3ONxhFw5mRrQ1K931gxaxBZgo45_%2BynLrrbm4DUw@mail.gmail.com> <0D672BB1-1928-4F7A-BF72-CA7EE15D0563@gid.co.uk> <CACpH0McOx_Kza-Ou-=ko724cehF0Kp3uhN%2B6mFy2L0GdLQ1ESg@mail.gmail.com> <20130517003058.GW77641@eureka.lemis.com> <CACpH0Mfd0iQ1phmJ1V-3WzwtPsboPerBbyBTCVWJZ3E1f9pgLg@mail.gmail.com>
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Am 17.05.2013 02:56, schrieb Zaphod Beeblebrox: > On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 8:30 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@freebsd.org>wrote: > >> On Thursday, 16 May 2013 at 19:56:14 -0400, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote: >>> On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 5:08 PM, Bob Bishop <rb@gid.co.uk> wrote: >>>> On 16 May 2013, at 21:51, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote: >>>> >> >> > [about my tape drive not working] > > >> The obvious question: can you write tapes and read them back? My >> experience with DDS tapes was of extreme unreliability. The age >> doesn't make things any easier. >> > > Well... therein lies my other suspicion. I don't have any DDS4 tapes to > try writing, but the DDS3 tapes I have fail to write. > > ... but they don't even try. The tape spools up when inserted and "mt > offl" works (ejects the tape) and the drive doesn't indicate any error at > this point --- but it doesn't even try to start moving for either read or > write. Have you used dd, tar, or pax, to actually write data? I suppose newer DDS drives would not actually engage the tape to their head drum until you were actually reading/writing, in order to reduce wear and tear of tape and heads. Not that it helps you now: Personally, after a few first steps with DDS1DC and DDS2, I dropped helical scan stuff because I often found that I could read tapes only on the same drive that had written them (I had three drives around in the late 1990s/early 2000); no matter if the heads were cleaned or not, and I moved on going for for optical disks and linear tape (which includues MLR/SLR, DLT, SuperDLT, LTO; personally I used SLR2, SLR4DC and SLR6 aka SLR24).
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