DAT72 and DDS2 tapes

[Rob Radcliffe]

We have purchased a new ProLiant server fitted with a DAT-72 Tape unit as our old server has died.

Our problem is that our old server had a Surestore Dat-8 tape drive using DDS2 tapes. The new server will not recognise the Dat-8 tape unit on a SCSI expansion card (possibly becasue the Raid controller is also a SCSI card. The on board SCSI slots are the 'small and narrow' type (not the technical term but I amsure you know what I mean) whilst the Dat-8 requires a larger connection.

DAT-72 does not seem to support DDS-2 tapes. Is there anyway to either force the DAT-72 to use the tapes as a 1 off so we can restore data saved off the 'dead' server or to be able to connect the DAT-8 device to the new server long enough to recover the data.

The server is

ML350 T03 Xeon 2.4GHz/400 1024 MB 3x36GB 10K U320 SA642 RAID 5

[Rothery Harris]

Dear Rob,

You are correct in assuming that DAT72 cannot read DDS-2 tapes. It is R/W compatible with DDS-3 and DDS-4. The RAID controller on the Proliant does support taep drives. If you wish to migrate your DDS-2 media you can connect a DDS-2 drive. Ensure that it is on a different SCSI address.

Rothery

[CA393246]

Rob,
I had a similar problem with a Unix system. I created a patch tape on an older system using a DDS-2 tape. I could not read it with the DAT72 on a new system. Had to scrounge up a DDS-3 tape.
If you have anything on older DDS-2 tapes that you may want to restore sometime, you'll need to get an older tape drive to have around just in case.