DAT DDS-4 USB Tape Drive

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Level 1

15 points

DAT DDS-4 USB Tape Drive

I have lots of data on DDS-2 and DDS-3 tapes from my Unix SCSI days. I'd like to buy a USB DAT drive and have it work instantly, taking tar and dd commands to pull data off of my tapes.

Am I dreaming or is this possible? Shockingly, I can't get a definitive answer from HP, who makes the predominant USB DAT drive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated- particularly if you've done this yourself!

MacPro2 3GHz dual Quad, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Apr 4, 2011 12:29 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Apr 4, 2011 12:39 PM in response to DLz

Instead of buying your own drive and trying to figure out how to make it work, you'd probably be better off taking the tapes to a data conversion service. They should be able to transfer the contents to CD's.

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Answer 2

DLz Author

Level 1

15 points

Apr 5, 2011 7:23 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks Linc, I may have to go that route. But, I'd really like to have the ability to do this on my own; so, if anyone knows about magnetic tape functionality in OSX I'd appreciate hearing about it.

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Answer 3

Apr 5, 2011 10:08 AM in response to DLz

Funny, I have an old SCSI DAT drive sitting around. Thought it might be fun to use, but would require a lot of modification. I backed up all my DAT tapes to CD, then DVD when I still had a Mac with a SCSI port.
Given how slow it was, I vastly prefer Time Machine into my backup drives and hard copy backups to DVD.
It was shame to toss out all those expensive tapes, but technology moves ahead!

Rather than pay for a conversion service (depending on the number of tapes you have), it might be cheaper to pick up an old Mac.

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