>>Somewhat on-topic question: can someone recommend a program, to run under
>>MS-DOS (or maybe Windows) that is capable of reading a file (in the tape
>>sense) from a SCSI tape drive. Not interpreting the file at all, just being
>>able to copy it to disk.
>What sort of tape drive? If it's supported under Linux, and it probably is,
>then 'dd' would certainly do it.
'dd' will also throw away all the original blocking information on the
tape. Many platforms and OS's will depend on finding tape marks and
varying record lengths, and if you just 'dd' the tape all this information
is lost. I've made a good amount of money over the years recovering
RSX-11M BRU tapes where someone transferred the tape through a Unix
system with 'dd' and lost all the blocking information.
Most Unix-like OS's come with "tc" or a variation that will display
tape blocking information; often folks take the output of "tc" and use
this to create a script of "dd" commands that will handle the various
block sizes on a particular tape. Under RSX-11M and VMS, I much prefer
"TPC" format, which allows exact tape images to automatically be made
with all the blocking information preserved.
--
Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa_at_trailing-edge.com
Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/
7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917
Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927
Received on Thu Mar 04 1999 - 19:56:36 GMT