Tape dumping programs for Unix/Linux...

From: Doc <doc_at_mdrconsult.com>
Date: Thu May 2 21:23:26 2002

On Thu, 2 May 2002, Douglas H. Quebbeman wrote:

> I just did a 'dd' of a bad QIC-80 tape; it read the entire tape
> as a single file, and didn't bail out.
>
> I've not done that with magtape, but ISTR someone else here
> saying that 'dd' does raw reads, bad blocks and all...
>
> My bad if not true.

  No bad, just an honest difference in perspective. I recently went
through this with a set of VMS-based diagnostics tapes. AFAIK, the
tapes are undamaged, but dd returns a valid read - of the first file on
the tape - and stops. I'm not that familiar with non-"streaming"
formats, so I just accept what is without knowing why....
  dd on a disk or raw filesystem ignores files. On a tape archive, even
using the raw device as the if, dd reads files and stops at the end of
the first record.
  cat just dumped useless gibberish to a file. catting the file back to
tape "should have" worked, right? Nope.

        Doc
Received on Thu May 02 2002 - 21:23:26 BST