On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 3:04 PM, Chuck Guzis <ccl...@sydex.com> wrote:
> On 01/25/2017 02:16 PM, Eric Smith wrote: > > On Jan 25, 2017 12:24 PM, "Stan Sieler" <sie...@allegro.com> wrote: > >> We have a friend with a "tape" (DDS, DLT, or LTO ... don't know > >> which yet) to which was written a system backup. Thousands of > >> files, with an EOF between each file, and a double EOF + EOT at the > >> end. > >> > >> The problem: They then accidentally overwrote the start of the tape > >> yesterday with about 1 KB of data, plus EOT. > > > > I hope someone can prove me wrong, but I think that short of a major > > effort to hack the drive firmware, the data is gone. Modern tape > > drives are "too smart" to allow reading past logical EOT, and the > > tape format is too complex to allow fooling the firmware by any > > simple means. > > With nothing left to lose, I suppose that one might overwrite the EOT > and then kill power during the write, then attempt to read backward from > the end of the tape. > > I've never done it, but who knows? > > Or do it the data recovery way -- find a broken drive with a working transport, hookup a A/D to the tape heads, stream the tape, capture the flux, decode. Not necessarily easy, tho. -- Charles
