[5228] in linux-scsi channel archive
Re: Linux 4mm SCSI DAT Drive Settings
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Popov)
Sun Nov 29 06:45:24 1998
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 23:19:41 -0800
From: Popov <popov@ix.netcom.com>
To: Jon Lewis <jlewis@inorganic5.fdt.net>
CC: Martin Gallant <martyg@wired.ml.org>, amanda-users@amanda.org,
linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
Jon Lewis wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Nov 1998, Popov wrote:
>
> > As far as I know, all DAT drives support both, variable and fixed block
> > modes.
>
> But if you plan to move tapes between multiple drives, you might find that
> some drives handle larger block sizes than others, and variable size
> blocks written by one may not be readable by all. When this used to be an
> issue for me, I used 8kb blocks.
All DAT drives I know of are SCSI, so the block size issue is a SCSI thing,
not a DAT or DDS one. If a drive claims to be SCSI X compliant, then it
must support all sizes supported by SCSI sequential access devices, and
there's pretty much no limit as to what the size can be.
Some drives power up in variable size default mode, others in fixed. I think
the
bottom line is that if you'll be transferring tapes between different systems,
you'll save yourself a lot of heart ache if you know how SCSI tape drives
behave in variable vs fixed mode, and what your software is doing.
Pete
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