DLT tape recovery - can data be recovered after an overwrite?

Posted by Mark on Nov 21, 2008

Interesting data recovery job this one, most especially as it had been sent to three other companies in continental Europe before it found its way across the moat to dear old blighty.

The data on this tape was an Amanda backup from a Sun UNIX system, in the region of 80GB had been written to an SDLTII data cartridge for safekeeping, but no-one had set the tape to write protect. Consequently, when one of the IT staff went to recover some data from the tape, something went wrong and the DLT was re-initialised. From being a vital system backup brimming with data ready to be accessed, the DLT was just another scratch tape waiting to be used. Needless to say the accounts department who needed the data were non-too happy when their data could no longer be restore.

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The long and winding DLT

Posted by Mark on Oct 18, 2008

Tape is tough, but really …

As a data recovery engineer pretty well nothing comes as a surprise. We have received DLT cartridges where the tape has snapped, been overwritten, even where it has been submerged in flood water for over a week.

Nothing, though, has been quite as bizarre as the empty DLT case that arrived, along with a supermarket carrier bag crammed full of unwound tape. What was going on?
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