On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Zane H. Healy wrote:
> > I have no idea what various DAT formats there are so I'll have to research
> > that. Ditto for the WORM drives (I have one more somewhere in my
> > collection).
>
> Could you report your findings on the DAT formats? I'm really interested in
> that!
Here's what I've come up with.
There are currently 5 DAT formats (DDS, DDS-1, DDS-2, DDS-3, and DDS-4)
and all are backward compatible.
According to this site:
http://www.ls.eso.org/lasilla/Telescopes/2p2T/E2p2M/WFI/tapes/TapeType.html
DDS-2 and DDS-3 use physically different media. I don't know how this
figures if the standards are all supposed to be backward compatible.
Here's a great page on backup tape in general:
http://www.pctechguide.com/15tape.htm
Here's a troubling statement I found on this webpage:
"One of the drawbacks with QIC is incompatibility. The format has suffered
from an overabundance of standards over the years - there are more than
120 currently - and not all QIC drives are compatible with all standards."
Oy. Looks like I'll have to hang on to every single different tape drive
I find to make sure I can recover any QIC formats that get thrown at me.
At least until I find a definitive reference that tells me what drives can
read what formats.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger
http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
Received on Wed Feb 13 2002 - 13:29:25 GMT