So anyone who has never used a tape drive before, be aware they take hours to do anything. Write a backup, hours, verify the backup, hours, restore the backup, hours. it's not so much get a coffee time, as go out to the movies, sit around in a coffee shop talking about the movie for a while after, then go home see if it finished. Best you kick them off at bedtime really and use a prog that doesn't need confirmation to run the verify right after so you know it worked. Also I would not recommend messing with drives and tapes in questionable states of repair, you prolly gotta invest a week of free time in finding out whether the darned things are working right or not, then another couple fixing and tweaking until they do. Maybe worth the screwing around if you've got given the 1996 nightly backup of a software house on some weird tape format, or other archivist type endeavors, but for kicks and giggles, they will kick your ass black and blue, and the most likely giggles are after the inevitable descent to insensible hilarity when you finally lose it. (If you ever wondered why oldskool sysops seemed a bit hair trigger twitchy, now you know)
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.