How I recovered my DAT Tapes without an Amiga --------------------------------------------- First I hoped to use WinUAE to read the tapes using the SCSI Tape option My first problem windows did not recognise my SCSI card no drivers available arghh! Back to the drawing board I know lets try Linux that has drivers for everything Installed Linux Mint on an old pentium from out the loft bingo SCSI card is installed and working First make sure the tape is rewound sudo mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind extract first backup from tape sudo dd if=/dev/nst0 of=tape1.bin some times things go wrong and you want to get to a backup point on the tape sudo mt -f /dev/nst0 fsf 5 This will take you to the end of tape backup 5 so your ready to extract tape6.bin this command will confirm what tape position you are at sudo mt -f /dev/nst0 status A very important point if your tape contains multiple backups is dev/nst0 it took me a bit to work this out as I was using dev/st0 and it always rewound the tape to the beginning dev/nst0 means no rewind Reading the images in WinUAE ---------------------------- All my backups are in Am-back format So install your Workbench and install Ami-back I also created a work folder dh1: you need then to add a hardfile select your tape.bin that you created in linux that is now dh2: ok Start WinUAE load up Ami-Back go to configuration set source as dh2: destination as dh1: then restore it's very quick and a shock to see it working. Recovering damaged Tapes ------------------------ A few of my tapes have been damaged usually on just the first backup I could not read them then I discovered safecopy safecopy is an awesome recovery program it will reover just about any device download safecopy sudo apt-get install safecopy Usage sudo safecopy /dev/st0 recover1.bin this will recover the first backup on the tape PROBLEMS -------- My problem is not knowing or understanding how to recover a damaged backup that is not at the start of a tape What safecopy says If the tape device driver supports lseek(), treat it as any file, otherwise utilize the "-S" option of safecopy with a to be self-written script to skip over the bad blocks. (for example using "mt seek") Make sure your tape device doesn't auto-rewind on close. Send me feedback if you had any luck doing so, so I can update this documentation. I have a tape that is at position 6 but safecopy just rewinds the tape, I thought maybe use /dev/nst0 Yes it works until it gets to the error then fails obviously I need to use the -S option but its beyond me If any one who reads this is a Linux wizard and can help I have one backup I can not recover fully In tape position 6 Any help would be fanastic
Teemu1.huusko