J. Erik Hemdal wrote:
I've never seen "software write protected" tapes, but I have seen
soft-formatted ones. If the tapes are not truly factory-fresh and
formatted, then all bets can be off. If they were "bulk-erased" (where
someone applies an external magnetic field to thoroughly erase data), if the
tapes were mishandled en route to you or magnetically damaged, the
formatting can go awry. Then you simply might not be able to use the tapes
at all, without re-establishing a clean reformat. That might not be
possible without equipment from the tape manufacturer's factory. It's not
what's recorded on the tape that's the problem, but what ISN'T there that
needs to be.
Thanks for this little tidbit. I had to go through some real contortions
in that I had to install Win2K on a spare drive and load an OnStream
supplied program called Tape@Once. The Tape@Once program allowed me to
format the ADR30 cartridges. After I did that to the 6 tapes in question
I rebooted into FC1 and I could write perfectly to them. I did a series
of writes and reads using the bacula btape program to test the media so
I am confident the tapes are suitable for my home backup application.
--
Paul (ganci@xxxxxxxxxx)
