VOGONS

4mm DDS Tapes - TAPEDISK

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First post, by psychz

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I was given several DDS-1 tapes back from '97, which I don't know with what program they were written. I have set up a Compaq DDS4 drive so as to restore them (it appears to support DDS1/2/3 too) on an Adaptec 29320, but Windows XP's NTBackup doesn't recognize the format. What backup software existed back then? Is there any kind of "fingerprint" I can attempt to look for?

Last edited by psychz on 2017-08-15, 13:57. Edited 1 time in total.
Stojke wrote:

Its not like components found in trash after 20 years in rain dont still work flawlessly.

:: chemical reaction :: athens in love || reality is absent || spectrality || meteoron || the lie you believe

Reply 1 of 6, by Zup

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Maybe they are from some kind of Unix. They used combinations of tar/cpio/dd to write on them.

If the host was windows, I'd try to use ntbackup, Symantec/Veritas/Norton backup (don't know under what designation was sold at '97)... maybe HP Data Protector...

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 2 of 6, by psychz

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Due to their contents (from the labels), I believe they were written on a Windows machine. I came across TapeIO. If it manages to get a raw dump, I might find out about the file format...

Stojke wrote:

Its not like components found in trash after 20 years in rain dont still work flawlessly.

:: chemical reaction :: athens in love || reality is absent || spectrality || meteoron || the lie you believe

Reply 3 of 6, by psychz

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"Copyright 1993, TAPEDISK Corporation"
...defunct. It appears to be a program to treat the tape as a removable device in Win9x. No support for NT/2k/XP for TapeDisk Pro. They had one called TD Raw NT which might have done the trick, but the Internet Archive doesn't have the demo version. I'd install Windows 98SE, but neither my drive (Compaq SDT10000) nor my SCSI card seem to have Windows 9x drivers. Any clues?

Stojke wrote:

Its not like components found in trash after 20 years in rain dont still work flawlessly.

:: chemical reaction :: athens in love || reality is absent || spectrality || meteoron || the lie you believe

Reply 4 of 6, by Predator99

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...

Last edited by Predator99 on 2024-05-01, 19:52. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 5 of 6, by psychz

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I did manage to read raw data from these tapes using the TapeIO freeware I mentioned above, though it's not a tarball. It's like using dd to stream from the device. The data stored isn't compressed (I could read .txt files), though without getting that TapeDisk software to work I don't think I'll get back the exact file structure in them. Now let's see how to get this (or another) SCSI controller to work under Win95/98.

Stojke wrote:

Its not like components found in trash after 20 years in rain dont still work flawlessly.

:: chemical reaction :: athens in love || reality is absent || spectrality || meteoron || the lie you believe

Reply 6 of 6, by scize

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Most of the dds-1 tapes I've restored from the 90's were backed up by cpbackup. I have a bootable usb stick image with freedos + cpbackup / novabackup which works really well, let me know if you need a copy.

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