Reading information from erased tapes

[Martin Hoogenboom]

Hi all,

According to our security guidelines tapes should only be disposed if completely unreadable. Now we do have 'some' TU tapes that used to contain data but are not readable anymore the normal way. Is there a way (in VMS) to check if anything can be read from these tapes regardless format ?

Regards,
Martin Hoogenboom

[Karl Rohwedder]

You may try mount/for and dump.
Safest way is to put them into a shredder.

regards Kalle

[Robert Gezelter]

Martin,

Even if the drives (and drivers) can no longer read them, they can be examined with specialized hardware.

I would disassemble the cartridges and shred or incinerate the actual tape.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Martin Hoogenboom]

Didn't think of the dump, thanx, i'll try that.

The shred solution is exactly what I advised in the first place, but then got curious how I could get info from the tapes anyhow.

Regards,
Martin H