DDS Compatibility

[Ayman Altounji]

Can the Compaq 20/40GB DDS4 Tape Drive write to tapes using the DDS3 format ?

The documentation for the drive states
"Offers investment protection for DDS-2 and DDS-3 customers who have standardized on the DDS technology by offering higher capacity, performance, reliability and back-wards read/write capabilities"

...does this just refer to the ability to read and write DDS 3 tapes using the DDS 4 format ?

[Ayman Altounji]

Yup. You can use any previous DDS tapes. This is pretty much relevant to all tape drives except the SDLT 110/220- it can on read previous tapes, writing is on its way.

[Ayman Altounji]

I understand that a DDS3 tape written in DDS3 format on a DDS3 drive can be read on a DDS4 drive ... however .... can a DDS3 tape written to on a DDS4 drive be read in the DDS3 drive ?

When I tried this the DDS3 tape was ejected ..... the only way I've found to transfer data from DDS4 to DDS3 via Backup Exec is to turn off hardware compression in the backup settings.