[plug] [OT] Recover data from DDS4 tape

[Craig Ringer]

On Fri, 2004-03-19 at 11:23, Chris Caston wrote:

> I'm just looking at the customers options at moment. Lots of people told
> me the IDE DDS4 drives are crap but didn't elaborate on the technical
> explanation. Surely they must be of some value and could be useful at
> least for this situation.

Like any backups, if you don't test them they're probably more harmful
(in a false sense of security) than they are useful. DDS-4 has low
capacity, it's error handling is less than ideal, and while it verifies
as it writes there are questions about how good that verification really
is. It does, however, work very well in my experience; I've never had
the budget to work with DLT or LTO.

> Does anyone know how much the IDE-DDS4 drives are and where to obtain?

I'm not aware of any existing - IDE tape drives tend to be /really/ crap
stuff like Travan. If you really need one, just get a SCSI one like
this:
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/dat40/index.html
instead.

You may find it more sensible to pay the leg, and take it to
professional data recovery. You avoid risking damaging the backup,
having to hunt around for appropriate software to read the backups, etc.

This, BTW, is why I use good 'ol tar in my backups.

Craig Ringer