Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!decwrl!ucbvax!PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU!SRFERGU%ERENJ
From: SRFERGU%ERENJ@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU (Scott Ferguson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Exabyte Tape Drive Error Handling
Message-ID: <9103132005.AA20850@umix.cc.umich.edu>
Date: 13 Mar 91 19:51:44 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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In most tape drives, a bad section of tape is handled by passing over
to the next block, right?

In an exabyte drive, it seems the tiniest little tape dropout causes you
to lose all your data.

I went and bought the $30.00 tapes from Exabyte, thinking that they'd be
more error-free than the Sony P6-120MP's, but I've still lost some really
nice images to "hard error on tape" messages.

Is there any way in high-level software (like in tar) to skip over bad blocks
of tape? I'd prefer to lose only the portion of data that was written onto
the bad tape segment, and save some of the data beyond.

Sorry, I can't use rbak/wbak, for all the usual reasons.

Thanks,
Scott Ferguson
srfergu@erenj.bitnet