Pre-formatted tapes for HP drives

[Steve Fullerton]

In article <26007 at teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> mkhaw at teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Mike Khaw) writes:
>> Question 2) If it is not possible, then does anybody know if other
>> 	    companies than HP make these pre-formatted tapes? We
>
>3M makes them.  They are DC600HC tapes.

I used to purchase the 3M DC600HC tapes for use on a HP9144 on an HP1000
and while they are pre-formatted, they are not certified.  For a 150 ft
tape it required about 15 minutes to certify and an hour for 600 ft tapes.
During the certification process, the system would be completely locked
up and unusable.  I'm not sure if HP-UX requires certified tapes or
not.  And if so, what program would be used to certify them.  I believe
that `certified' means that a bad block scan is done and spares are
created.  This is necessary since HP also treats these tapes as blocked
media suitable for file systems.

We now have 2 cartridge tape drives and a 9-track drive and ONLY use
the cartridge drives to build recovery systems.  Used 1600 bpi 9-track
drives for HP systems are cheap so if you do a lot of tape handling it
might be worth it for you.


-- 
Steve Fullerton                        Statware, Inc.
scf%statware.uucp at cs.orst.edu          260 SW Madison Ave, Suite 109
orstcs!statware!scf                    Corvallis, OR  97333
                                       503/753-5382