*BSD News Article 90093


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From: j@ida.interface-business.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Subject: Re: Tape backup
Date: 25 Feb 1997 13:24:00 GMT
Organization: interface business GmbH, Dresden
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Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6099

peter@cyklop.volvo.se (peter hakanson) wrote:

> Jim,
> you don't have to format or initialize a tape in unix!

Peter,

that's not a question of Unix or !Unix.  It's a matter of the tape
drive design.  Unless you're absolutely certain in your statement
wrt. the HP T4000 (which i doubt), i would be more careful with such
globally stated opinions.

I know of at least one SCSI tape drive that needs formatting (the
Exabyte 25xx series).  Since the T4000 is probably using similar QIC
minicartridges, i wouldn't be surprised if they require formatting,
too.

I don't know whether BSD/OS gives you a command-line interface to raw
SCSI commands.  In FreeBSD, the EXB-2501 could be formatted using

	scsi -s 3600 -c /dev/rst0.ctl -c "4 0 0 0 0 0"

(the basic FORMAT UNIT command).  That's roughly the same as the
`meat' of FreeBSD's scsiformat(8) command as well.

-- 
J"org Wunsch					       Unix support engineer
joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de       http://www.interface-business.de/~j