Tape to tape copy (DLT)

[James George_1]

Hi

I have an fbackup taken on a DLT tape. Now I want to replicate the tape, ie, copy to another DLT. I searched on the forums and I couldn't find any successfull commands.
Could some one help ..
James

[Stefan Farrelly]

You cant. Fbackup uses some variable block sizes when writing which you cant duplicate with commands, even dd.

Only options are;

1. frecover it back to disk then fbackup to a new tape.
2. use a twin-DLT tape drive system which has a button to 'duplicate' a tape. Yes these do exist - ive seen and used one!

[John Palmer]

Hi James,

Quote from 'man fbackup':

fbackup creates volumes with a format that makes duplication of
volumes by dd impossible (see dd(1)). Copying an fbackup volume
created on one media type to another media type does not produce a
valid fbackup volume on the new media because the formats of volumes
on raw magnetic tape, on a regular file, and on rewritable optical
disks are not identical.

Regards,
John

[S.K. Chan]

You can probably get away with it if it's a tar archive but not fbackup. I sometimes use "dd" to dup my tar tapes. Even that is not gurantee to work.

[Anthony deRito]

Most all good third party backup software will allow you to "clone" a tape. I clone all full backup tapes in order to send one off-site. Legato NetWorker is what I use but there are many others.

Tony