Preventing cartridge tape stickiness

From: Aaron Christopher Finney <af-list_at_wfi-inc.com>
Date: Tue Oct 19 14:30:32 1999

I talked to a data recovery specialist a while back on the bus from the
San Francisco airport into the city about just these things. He was
telling me (in addition to lots of other interesting things about coaxing
data from "hopeless" media) that they use a special lubricant to separate
sticky tape apart. Is there something that would work the same way
available to the general computer-using populace?

Also, since it's just magnetic media, couldn't you disassemble the tape
and soak it in warm water, then try to hang it somewhere to dry? I've done
the same things with floppy disks that had "mystery" spills on them that
stuck the media to the inside of the housing...

Just musing,

Aaron


On Tue, 19 Oct 1999, Tony Duell wrote:

> > destroyed when I tried to read it. Not sure how to try to preserve the
> > rest of the data, written with the Stut (the streaming tape utilitu
> > software) software, that's still on the tape - any ideas?
>
> Am I correct this is a QIC11 tape, 4 track, written on a Sidewinder or
> similar?
>
> You are going to have problems. I assume that when the tape stuck
> together, it pulled some oxide off the tape, and that there are now
> transparent patches in the middle of the data area. The EOT (and BOT)
> detection on these drives is optical, and will be triggered by this damage.
>
> My guess is that the Sidewider drive iteself is going to be unable to get
> the data blocks off the tape. The 'Intellegent Controller' (Archive's
> term for the QIC-02 to QIC36 interface board) is not going to allow you
> to read past what it thinks is the end of the tape.
>
> And unless you can get the drive to read blocks off the tape, there's
> nothing you can do by messing about with stut on the host.
>
>
> -tony
>
>
Received on Tue Oct 19 1999 - 14:30:32 BST