Tar problems

[Dr. Samuel Paolucci]

I have a problem that I hope someone can help me with.  I have a QIC tape
with important information in it.  This tape was write protected.  I used
it last to get stuff from it about a month ago.  The info is saved in it
in tar format.  A couple of days ago I tried to get stuff from the tape
and very quickly tar stops without retreiving anything. If I persist by
using mt by skipping files, it tells me that I've reached the end of the
tape.  I've also tried using dd in reading the tape, but I've been
unsuccessful.  It seems that somehow an end-of-tape mark is read near the
beginning of the tape and all the unix utilities (tar, mt, and dd) refuse
to go past it.  The only exception is if I retension the tape in which
case it goes from beginning to end.  In all the above attempts I have
tried using the utilities repeatedly using the no-rewind device (i.e.
/dev/nrst0).  I suspect that the difficulty I'm having in trying to move
through the tape is due to the device driver that all these utilities make
use of.

Can somebody give me any suggestion, or have any utility that will allow
me to recover the info I have on tape.  I will be eternally grateful.

Please only reply by E-mail since I don't read this newsgroup often enough.

						-+= SAM =+-