re-init DDS3-tape

[J.A.R. Karremans]

I need to re-initialize a DDS-3 tape on a hpux system. Can anyone give me a command / script to do this??

[Mark Grant · Accepted solution]

Have a look at the "mediainit" command.

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rmt/0m

greetings,

Michael

[Patrick Wallek]

You simply write over the tape with something else. There really is not any tape initialization with native HP-UX utilities.

[Bill Hassell]

DDS tapes don't have any set format. Just store something on the tape. If you have an old tape degausser, throw it AWAY! The days of bulk erasing tapes for reuse is long gone. DLT/LTO and other newer technologies are preformatted and once erased with a bulk eraser, they are useless. All new tapes starting with DDS have a feature that prevents a tape drive from spacing beyond the last recorded information. So you can record just a small file on the tape (ie, tar cvf /dev/rmt/0m /etc/issue) and now, nothing beyond the end of that tiny file can be seen (without a tape laboratory setup). The tape drive will not space beyond the last write.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi,

Mark is correct - mediainit is the tool. Use it as follows:

mediainit -r /dev/rmt/0m

This will recertify the tape i.e. find all existing & new bad blocks & destroy all previous data on the tape.

Rgds,
Jeff

[J.A.R. Karremans]

Thanx all very much. I used the mediainit command and it worked like a charm. It is mass-use thing, the tapes just contained some sensitive material that needed to be destroyed and we just couldn't bring ourselves to burning the tapes ;-)
Regards,
Jan Karremans