Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!apple!bionet!agate!ucbvax!hplabs!hpl-opus!hpccc!hp-sde!bd
From: bd@hp-sde.SDE.HP.COM (Bob Desinger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Copying HP Cartridge tapes
Message-ID: <920010@hp-sde.SDE.HP.COM>
Date: 5 Oct 88 18:16:42 GMT
References: <1250024@hpsemc.HP.COM>
Organization: HP Software Engineering Systems, Palo Alto
Lines: 17

John V. Morris (jmorris@hpsemc.HP.COM) writes:
> Apparently HP tapes have an unusual format, so most services can't copy them.

Like many vendors, they use the 3M format.  The Other Leading Brand of
format is QIC, also used by many vendors, most notably Sun.  There are
various technical reasons for the differing standards (which were
settled upon before the market had a chance to stabilize---kinda like
the way we have VHS and Beta videotape standards).  You can mount a 3M
tape as a filesystem, for instance (!), but I think the QIC tapes are
faster for typical archive purposes.  The bottom line is that the 3M
and QIC standards are quite incompatible.  You can't read a 3M tape
on a QIC drive, or vice versa.  The 3M tapes are formatted by 3M at
the factory, so the tape format is cast in bronze.

-- bd

P.S.	Tell everyone on hpsemc that I said hi!