Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:17:05 -0500 From: Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Reading an unknown DAT Tape Message-ID: <201203152017.q2FKH5mN067960@x.it.okstate.edu>
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This is a case of idle curiosity and not an urgent need to recover a valuable backup. I found an old DAT tape and attempted to read it on the very drive that probably once wrote it and it appears to read the tape properly in that I can use dd to copy it to a file and mt fsf 5, for example, takes the tape to the fifth file marker so there is sanity. Tar, however, does not recognize the format of the archive so it is either something proprietary or I am not using the correct utility on it. I opened it with dd files=2 if=/dev/sa0 of=testfile and then did the strings utility on testfile and got: TAPE SSET VOLB DIRB NACL Setting security iles SPAD DIRB NACL Setting security on system files... SPAD DIRB NACL SPAD DIRB NACL SPAD FILE NACL STAN Jun 23 2003 12:00AM Jan 1 1900 8:45AM Jan 1 1900 9:00AM Note that we are obviously able to read data from the tape as the top few lines are readible as words. The time stamps at the bottom are possibly not time stamps as some of them are not plausible. The dd command never faltered with errors although I did finally stop it manually. Is there any FreeBSD utility that can tell more about what created the original archive? Thank you. Martin McCormick
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