cannot read dat72 tape

[James Sim]

We have a dat72 tape that was created from an hpux 11.31 itanium server. We no longer have access to this server but need to read the contents of the tape. We do have a Windows 2003 server with an internal dat72 tape drive. Is it possible for Windows to read this tape?

James.

[Grayh]

May be you can do that using Data Protector or may be over the SAN...

I found this link.. Not sure how far it is useful to u

[Grayh]

May be you can do that using Data Protector or may be over the SAN...

I found this link.. Not sure how far it is useful to u


http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=34697

[OldSchool]

the first question would be "what application or tool wrote the tape?"

without that, a meaningful answer isn't possible.

[James Sim]

A user wrote to the tape using tar or fbackup. I don't remember which one.

[Patrick Wallek]

If it was written with either of those then the chances are pretty slim of Win2003 being able to read the tape.

With tar, if you have access to another Unix machine, you may be able to read it.

With fbackup you need an HP-UX server as fbackup is proprietary to HP-UX.

[OldSchool]

There are "tar" work-alikes for win-based systems, one of which is here:

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libarchive.htm

there are others. while I can't vouch for it, it might be worth a look.

if it's fbackup, you're toast w/o a hp box w/ drive.

[James Sim]

Thanks for the pointers. I was able to extract the files using mt.exe for Windows. The tape was initially created using the tar command.