erase a DLT tape

[miki leon]

Hi

i m looking for a command or a third party applic that can do a erase to a DLT cassete .

i saw that mediainit is for disk and DDS and i dont want to use dd command to erase the data .

please help

[Robin Wakefield]

Hi,

You could just say:

echo > /dev/rmt/0m

or do you want to actually wipe the whole tape from start to finish?

Rgds, Robin.

[miki leon]

yes , i need to erase all the data in the tape .

the reason for that it i need to use this tape
for applic that check it the tape is totalay erase from the start .

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

You can degauss the tape if you want to make sure that no data is left in the tape. This link gives a link to a degaussing service, among other things:

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg50141.html

HTH,
Vince

[miki leon]

nice doc but this is not what i m looking for .

i think that it cant be done , thanks

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Miki,

There is no command to erase DLT tapes. Once you write something else on it, the old data on it is lost.

Try this link for more info,

http://us-support3.external.hp.com/cki/bin/doc.pl/sid=4a30976a0dfdaac4be/screen=ckiDisplayDocument?docId=200000053902924

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Anthony deRito]

The only way is to "degauss" the tape using an industrial strength magnet as mentioned before. If this is not a practical solution for you, then you have to write over your tape.

Perhaps it would help for you to explain your objective. You mentioned "check if the tape is totalay erased from the start." Can you elaborate on this?

Tony

[Helen French]

hey,

what about the 'mt' command? I have not tried this command in HPUX. But in Solaris, it does erase the media:
'mt rewind device_name'
'mt erase device_name'

2) You can degauss the media using the magnetic device.
3) I have Windows 2000 server which uses Veritas Backup Exec and it has a tool for erasing the media.

HTH,
Shiju