DAT drive I/O error

After some years backing up to an external USB drive, I would at this
point like to recover some files copied to 4mm DAT tape in ca. 2001
using bru2000 software. I installed the old drive, inserted a tape, and
experienced an I/O problem:

# mt -f /dev/st0 status
tape drive = Generic SCSI-2 tape
drive status = 318767616
sense key error = 0
residue count = 0
file number = -1
block number = -1
Tape block size 512 Bytes. Density code 0x13 (DDS (61000 bpi )).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (10100000):
ONLINE IM_REP_EN

# mt -f /dev/st0 tell
At block 0.

# tar -tvf /dev/st0
tar: /dev/st0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

Having no reason to assume that tar could manipulate data on a BRU2000
tape, I installed an old copy of BRU2000 I had kicking around and get:

# bru -t
bru: [W130] warning - read error on first block: errno = 5,
Input/output error
bru: [A121] load volume 1 - press ENTER to continue on device
'/dev/st0'

The tape drive is on a different SCSI bus than my HD. The bus is
terminated. I tried different tapes, but no difference. No log error
reports.

An obvious issue is head cleaning. so I blew out the drive bay, wiped
the head with some isopropyl, but was unable to locate the optical
sensor in the drive bay.

Are there things I might do to pin down just what is causing the I/O
error?

Can anyone help me identity the optical sensor in the WangDAT 3100 so
that I might clean it?

I did the backups with BRU2000. Does that mean that tar can't extract
the data from the tape?

Can I use dd to copy the contents of the tape onto HD and then untar
them from there?

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM



.

Relevant Pages

  • RE: redhat-list Digest, Vol 27, Issue 26
    ... The reason I was tarring a tar file to the tape I didn't want to backup a whole file system just to test the tape drive. ... I take that same tape and try to read it on the tape drive that is connected to the linux machine and it doesn't work. ... echo command as in windows ...
    (RedHat)
  • Re: problem with restore
    ... can tar be used to backup files on a machine with remote tape drive..?? ... the '-' on the tar command makes the 'f' go to stdout. ... Have you tried taking backup using tar utility instead of rdump. ... If you take backup and try restore using tar, ...
    (RedHat)
  • Re: Copying tar archives/tarballs to tape
    ... You may want to play about with the block size arguments in tar to find ... Some tape drives, when written to in ... Some apply error correction only on a per-block basis, ... for bzip2) flag when writing to tape, but bear in mind that compression uses CPU ...
    (uk.comp.os.linux)
  • RE: problem with restore
    ... Have you tried taking backup using tar utility instead of rdump. ... If you take backup and try restore using tar, ... Also you can verify the content of tape after backup using ...
    (RedHat)
  • Re: Tape backup using tar
    ... On Thursday 04 August 2005 11:06, Stuart Bailey wrote: ... >I'm haviong trouble using tar to backup to tape. ...
    (Fedora)