News Group Posts

generic scsi vs dat as tape type

From: "D. Thomas Podnar" <tom@microlite.com>
Subject: Re: Edge backup with Seagate Travan tape.
References: <og2C9.13459$TK2.1233280@juliett.dax.net>
<ardr64$f2l$1@pcls4.std.com>
<H5u7BB.1tIK@wjv.com>
<are4tq$cd4$1@pcls4.std.com>
<H5unH6.1y88@wjv.com>
<OHIC9.8$ZL2.850@juliett.dax.net>
<arfrhh$v5q$1@pcls4.std.com>
<20021120111729.I3983@mammoth.ca.sco.com> 
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 16:13:00 -0500

Bela Lubkin wrote:
> 
> Tony Lawrence wrote:
> 
> > On the tape type: almost nothing but 9 tracks should ever be configured
> > as generic scsi.  Travans shoud use dat, DLT's should use qic (if I
> > remember right), but very little is generic.  I don't understand what
> > the underlying differences in the drivers are (maybe Bela or one of the
> > supertar folks will bite on that bait ) but I do know that the wrong
> > choice breaks things badly.
> 
> I'll nibble.  There are different code paths in the Stp driver (in fact
> different source files) for certain functions, according to which drive
> type you told it.  The differences are distillations of behavioral
> differences observed by someone writing the driver 5-10 years ago.
> Little nuggets of wisdom like "DAT drives support tape partitioning, QIC
> don't".  I have no idea whether they still apply today -- one would
> expect that over time, _all_ the newer drives would support _all_ the
> command sets.
> 
> I'd have to read the source to be more specific, don't have time right
> now.  (Even the part about who supports tape partitioning is just an
> example of the _sorts_ of things encoded by the type; I don't know
> _which_ types the driver actually thinks support partitioning.)
> 
> I would guess the supertar folks have a much better idea of what the
> type switches really do...
> 
> >Bela<
Over the years we've also told everyone that, when in doubt, configure
it as a DAT.  
Tom Podnar
 

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