tapetools and VMS Backup tapes

[Ethan Dicks]

On 10/20/05, Tim  Shoppa <tshoppa at wmata.com> wrote:
> Are the "smaller sized" records 80 bytes, and have tape marks
> near them?  If so, these are the ANSI tape labels for volume start/end
> and saveset start/end.

No.  I would have recognized them if they had been such.  These
smaller blocks are anywhere from 9K up to but not quite 16K.

> If there are truly damaged records then the redundancy blocks
> (unless you turned them off) will help you.

I wouldn't have turned off the redundancy blocks - these tapes were
meant to be archival.  I wrote them on brand-new, never-written 3M
Blackwatch tapes, at 1600 bpi, not 6250, in the hopes of more
longevity.  If I hadn't been gallavanting around the world over the
past couple of years, I would have read these before, but here we are.
 I know they aren't a total loss, and I _do_ still have the hard drive
these came from, but I figured I'd rather fiddle with tapes first and
an ancient Fuji Eagle second (especially since the Eagle hangs off of
an SI9900 attached to an 11/750 - something I haven't turned on since
the day Software Results closed.

Thanks for the confirmation.

-ethan

P.S. - nobody asked, but I _did_ clean the heads and rollers between each tape.