Everhart,Glenn
From:	Richard B. Gilbert [76702.1567@compuserve.com]
Sent:	Thursday, April 09, 1998 10:18 AM
To:	Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject:	Recovering data from old 9-track tapes
Message text written by Larry Vincent
>vince@ftest.gulfaero.com (Larry Vincent)

>Okay, if I'm asking these questions in the wrong forum, hopefully
>someone will point me to a more appropriate locale....
>
>Here's the deal: my company has boatloads of old (up to 12 years)
>9-track tapes with VMS Savesets on them.  Lo and behold, someone
>now wants to know how much it will cost to recover the data from
>them.  I've been told that a recent spot check of a couple of
>tapes has indicated continued viability, so let's assume for a
>moment that there _is_ still something there worth recovering.
>
>Problem #1 : Getting the data transferred from 9-track to more
>modern media (we use Exabyte 8mm these days).  Anybody know of
>an outfit that could be hired to do this task?  We no longer
>have a 9-track tape drive onsite, so depending on overall costs,
>we may choose to go that route.

	Call Chris Muller at  (212) 344-0474,  and tell him I sent you. He might
be able to help you out.  FWIW, copying your data to 8mm would be leaping from
the frying pan into the fire!!!  8mm drives seem to require a lot of maintenance
and to go down at the damnedest times!  I'd suggest DLT in flavors of TZ86 or
better; your data will last longer.

>Problem #2 : Not only do we not have a tape drive, we no longer
>have a VAX!  What software is there out there that will run under
>HP-UX and read a VMS saveset?  I don't know what version of VMS
>we're talking about at this point, but guaranteed it'll be old.
>3 or 4, perhaps?

	There is a program available on the net called VMSBACKUP which is intended
to run under UNIX and is alleged to read VMS BACKUP savesets.  I'm not sure that
you can expect to recover anything more than ASCII text files on a Unix system. 
Certainly you can forget about indexed sequential files, VAX object and
executable files, etc.  Binary data might or might not be usable.  The bits and
bytes will restore; the problem is that no Unix box has the faintest clue what
to do with them!

	There is also a commercial program called VBACKUP available from Boston
Business Computing <sales@bbc.com>.

>Problem #3 : Unfortunately no one can help me with this - gotta
>resurrect or rebuild the software that'll read the data.
>
>Sheesh!  PLEASE let there be someone out there who's been through
>this already.  Thanks in advance for any help; email responses
>would be appreciated, but I'll try to keep an eye on this thread.<
>

	How come no one thought of this before getting rid of the last VAX and
the last 9 track drive?

	Your best bet might be to purchase a small VAX and 9-track tape drive
on the used market.  A workstation and a 9 track drive with a SCSI interface
would do it for you.  I would still suggest copying vital tapes to DLT rather
than 8mm, so you would want a DLT drive as well.

--
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*                        Here, there be dragons!                        *
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*                                                                       *
*                                                Richard B. Gilbert     *
*                                           Computer Systems Consultant *
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