Hi michaelk;

Recently, I bought an tape drive dat 160 from HP. His interface is USB, like from irhernan617. But, dont works with dat72 tapes, and I have 10 tapes for record my backups. I'm using linux Centos 6, and too ubuntu 10.04 32 bits, nobody works. Can you help me?

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The 160 can read/write to DAT72 tapes. What do you mean by not work?
How was the data written to tape?

I assume the drive is recognised correctly and a device ID /dev/st0 was created.

Hi Michaelk;

My dat 160 is new. So, I cant read the data from the dat72 tape, but, from dat160 tape I can. I write data on my dat72 with tar command:

tar -cvf /dev/st0 backup_db.sql

And, after, I want to read my dat72, with command:

tar -tvf /dev/st0

But, too many errors occur, like:

tar: /dev/st0: Não é possível read: Erro de entrada/saída
tar: Pulando para o próximo cabeçalho
tar: /dev/st0: Não é possível read: Erro de entrada/saída
tar: /dev/st0: Não é possível read: Erro de entrada/saída
tar: /dev/st0: Não é possível read: Erro de entrada/saída

tar: /dev/st0: Não é possível read: Erro de entrada/saída
tar: /dev/st0: Não é possível read: Erro de entrada/saída
tar: /dev/st0: Não é possível read: Erro de entrada/saída

And, I want restore data from the my dat72, with command:

tar -xvf /dev/st0 backup_db.sql, but, the same error occur.

Detail: I have 1 dat 160, and it's working well.

Thanks for all. sorry my english, I'm from Brazil.

I don't know if this will be of any help. The Tape cartridges have small circular holes on the underside towards the rear right (I think) when the tape loads these holes line up with small internal switch actuators allowing the cartridge to be identified to the drive as a DAT 160, DAT72 or DDS-4 which in turn selects the read/write density. Should the switch actuator be broken, the wrong density will be selected and you'll get read/write errors (If it defaults to DAT 160!)

You should be able to see the small white actuator pins inside the loading flap at either the left or right side. Compare with the holes on the cartridges to help locate them.

This is an extremely long shot. If there was a broken actuator pin you'd need to get a replacement drive.

Looking at the QuickSpecs here the data compression is set to 2:1 by default for DAT 160 tapes, you may have to set it to 1:1 to get DAT 72s to work properly though I'm not sure how you do that. I'd imagine that you'd have to initialise the drive during the write phase, prior to the tar command. Did you get a user manual with the drive?

Play Bonny!