fnf@fishpond.UUCP (Fred Fish) (05/25/90)
In article <5368@hub.ucsb.edu> jim@piggy.ucsb.edu (Oreo Cat) writes: > I backed up a bunch of files onto a >1/4" tape, and deleted them from the disk. Unfortunately I did not write >protect the tape after I wrote the files. Later I discovered that I needed >a few files off of the tape, but instead of saying "tar xvf /dev/rst0 file1 >file2 ..." I said "tar cvf /dev/rst0 file1 file2 ...". The files I listed >did not exist, but tar went ahead and put an empty tar file on the tape. This sort of tale of woe appears about once every 4-6 months on the net and the general flurry of knowledgeable replies explain that for the current crop of 1/4" tapes, there is NOTHING you can do with a stock tape drive to recover the data. The problem with recovery exists at the hardware level within the drive itself. It refuses to read past a written EOT, and it also erases across the full width of the tape as it writes the first track. If I am mistaken, someone who has successfully recovered from this situation using a stock 1/4" tape drive please send me the details of how you did it. If anyone has written up a long description of the details of why recovery is impossible, I'd also appreciate receiving a copy. Naturally, you should be able to recover at least part of your data using special hardware and software techniques. There are companies that specialize in this sort of thing, though I don't have any names or addresses quickly available (they are back at the office). -Fred -- # Fred Fish, 1835 E. Belmont Drive, Tempe, AZ 85284, USA # 1-602-491-0048 asuvax!mcdphx!fishpond!fnf
hbergh@oracle.nl (Herbert van den Bergh) (05/28/90)
In article <12910002@acf4.NYU.EDU> wood@acf4.NYU.EDU (David Wood) writes: > > Gnu tar has the -i option. By the way, gnu tar has some very > nice enhancements including a multi-volume ability. Well, I've got some diskettes at home I once created using SCO Xenix tar. These contain some multi-volume tar files, but seem to be incompatible with the GNU multi-volume format. I don't have access to a SCO Xenix system any more, but I'd like to read these multi-volume tar diskettes. Does anybody know of a tar or some program that can do this for me? Or please mail me a copy of the tar format of SCO Xenix tar files, so I can write a program myself. Thanks,