HP DAT Drive (C7438A) and 160Gb tapes

[Dwight Robinson]

I currently have an HP 4mm tape drive, model #C7438A. We currently use DAT 72 tapes with it. I'm wondering if DAT 160 tapes could also be used with that drive.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Flyin'High]

DDS-6 uses a wider tape format (8mm), and a thicker cassette.

A 72 (blue) media is ~10mm thick, and a 160 (brown) is ~1.5 cm.
Sadly, but it seems that it won't even fit :(

[thomasr]

Flyin' is correct -- DAT160 tapes are physically larger than DAT72 tapes, so you can't even get them in the earlier drives.

But the bigger answer is -- each new generation of tape drives relies on tighter specs for writing. The type of the media is contained in the tape header, as well as the cartridge memory chip for LTO tapes -- and no tape drive of recent memory will recognize or write to a newer tape format.

LTO and DAT do provide for backward functionality, however. That is, a tape drive will typically read two previous generations of media, and will be able to read and write to the immediately previous generation. (DAT72 reads DAT20, reads and writes DAT40; DAT160 reads DAT40, reads and writes DAT72)