How do I format tapes in HP-UX?

[Robert Funk_1]

I have an Exabyte Mammoth2 tape drive I just hooked to my rp5450 server. I would like to format some existing Exabyte 225m tapes created under VMS to re-use for HP-UX. Can you tell me what the command is to format these Exabyte tapes on /dev/rmt/2m?

Thank you! ==Robert

[Pete Randall]

Formatting should be unnecessary.

Pete

[Robert Funk_1]

There is sensitive data on these tapes that I would like to erase. Some of these tapes will be distributed to other groups within my company so I want to ensure the data has been removed.

Thank you... ==Robert

[Bill Hassell]

There is no format command for a tape. To erase the data, you can just use dd to copy some disk lvol to the tape where the size of the lvol is about the size of the tape. Degaussing is not recommended for modern tapes (Exabyte, DDS, DLT, etc).

[Steven E. Protter]

If you want to do an over-write erase, then tar a file onto them.

Or cpio.

Or fbackup /etc/issue

That will make the prior data on the tape quite unrecoverable.

A large magnet might damage the tape.

SEP

[Stefan Farrelly · Accepted solution]

There is no proper way to do it. You can use the mediainit command but its not necessary and i dont know if it will work successfully on an Exabyte tape.

Just use dd to blast the tape to whatever size you want. Use /dev/zero, if it doesnt exist create it with;

mknod /dev/zero c 3 4

Then use dd;

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rmt/0m bs=1024k count=1000

This will write 1Gb of zeroes to the tape. You can adjust as needed.

[Pete Randall]

If you insist, you could always try something like this:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rmt/2m bs=1024k



Pete

[Robert Funk_1]

Thanks for all the responses! After following your advise, I've discovered that I cannot write to /dev/rmt/2m - I'm getting an error message of "output file /dev/rmt/2m is not a valid device file for backup". I'll start a separate thread for this error. Points will be assigned!