[geeks] Reading Sun DAT72 tapes... maybe...

[Ethan Hawke]

Hello JP,


You can absolutely dd the byte stream off of a DDS/LTO/etc (a SCSI tape 
drive is a SCSI tape drive, to the OS at least), but you must specify 
the block size with the bs parameter, fortunately it doesn't have to be 
the exact size they originally used, just that size or larger, so pick 
something crazy like 512k or 1M, only difference is it will be padded to 
a multiple of the chosen block size.

As for the automatic blksize of '0', I have never got it to work, at 
least for DDS drives, I must always specify the block size manually. And 
the "Media Recognition System" is on all DDS media (except early DDS-1), 
it just means its not an audio DAT and it is "data grade", the tape 
drive will reject the tape if its missing MRS anyway.


Nice YouTube channel btw ;)


Hope this helps,

Ethan