I have a server running suse 9.1 with a Seagate ST2000 ide tape drive. The kernel defaulted to the ide-tape module and setup the tape drive as /dev/sta. I have a cron job that backs up /home each night:

tar cvf /dev/sta /home

Last night the HD crashed and I am having trouble reading the tapes. It seems that it only "sees" the files that were last "tarred" to tape. What I mean is, I extracted last nights tape and it was missing the files I need, HD died before the backup. So I pull out the tape from the day before and it shows the exact same contents, to the bit. So I try a 3rd tape and notice it seems to have the exact same data. Finally I realize that it is not reading the 2nd and 3rd tape. So I get a blank tape and tar some files to it. Now every tape seems to have only those files on it. It's like I need to mount the tape, but you don't mount tapes as far as I know. I tried:

rmmod ide-tape
modprobe ide-scsi
tar tvf /dev/st0

and I get:
tar: /dev/st0 Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: At beggining of tape, quitting now
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

Dmesg shows this output after load the ide-scsi module:

scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
Vendor: Seagate Model: STT20000A Rev: 8A51
Type: Sequential-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
st: Version 20030403, bufsize 32768, max init. bufs 4, s/g segs 16
Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
st0: Error with sense data: Current st09:00: sense key Illegal Request
Additional sense indicates Invalid command operation code
scsi : 0 hosts left.
hdb: attached ide-tape driver.
ide-tape: hdb <-> ht0: Seagate STT20000A rev 8A51
ide-tape: hdb <-> ht0: 1000KBps, 6*54kB buffer, 9720kB pipeline, 110ms tDSC
hdb: attached ide-scsi driver.
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
Vendor: Seagate Model: STT20000A Rev: 8A51
Type: Sequential-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
st0: Error with sense data: Current st09:00: sense key Illegal Request
Additional sense indicates Invalid command operation code
st0: Incorrect block size.
st0: Error with sense data: Current st09:00: sense key Illegal Request
Additional sense indicates Invalid command operation code
st0: Incorrect block size.


Is there anything else I can try?

Well the problem is definitely with the ide-tape module and it is fixed by using ide-scsi instead. But I am still not able to read tapes that were written with the ide-tape module. Once you write one, you can restore from it and list its contents, but only that tape. If you put in another tape written with ide-tape it still "sees" the stuff from the last time you "tarred" something to the tape drive, even when that tape has been replaced. Can't read them with ide-scsi either. I really would like to find a way to get that stuff off those tapes.