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Distribution: Debian /Jessie/Stretch/Sid, Linux Mint DE
Posts: 5,195
Rep:
Tape or tape drive. Try another tape, perform a write/read sequence. You could also attempt to run a cleansing tape. ButI can tell you for sure this is not a driver/software problem. The bits on the tape are not appearing correctly on the output of the drive. That is a mechanical or physical failure.
This is 4mm tape drive. Last time i read 3590 and 3592, with same pc no problem at all. Some of my friend said this 4mm sometimes complicated. Let me give some example:
1. Tape A cannot be read by tape drive A but it can be read by tape drive B. Either way around.
Are you sure the tape was written with a 512-byte block size? Check /var/log/messages for an "Incorrect block size" message. You can find the actual block size by putting the drive in variable block size mode and then trying to read a huge block:
The messages from dd will tell you how much was in that one block. If that is something other than tar's default block size (10240), you'll have to tell tar the correct size ("-b" option) as well as having the drive in the correct mode.
Not really surprised. The problem is in the fact that your heads got miss-aligned. This is a commen problem with drives that use a helical scan system. The only option you got is to have a professional company to re-align the heads so they can read the old tapes.
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