[clug] Can I re-record just the first record of a tape?

Eyal Lebedinsky eyal at eyal.emu.id.au
Mon Jul 28 19:44:50 EST 2003


Michael.James at csiro.au wrote:
> Can I reliably come back and re-record the logfile after,
>  without messing up the inter-record gap
>  and zapping the following records?

I am rather sure that you cannot do this. I mean, you can re-record
a file, but when you close the tape an EOF marker will be written.

Writing the same data to the tape, at the same position, will use
a different length of tape at different times, based on timing
(streaming) and natural mechanical variation. So even if the EOF
(tape mark) was not written, a broken record will likely follow
the last written one.

Nevertheless, if you leave enough unused space after the log file,
you may be able to fsf to the next file, skipping the broken
segment. The software will need to be able to ignore the end
-of-tape marker (two consecutive tape marks).

And even then it is likely not to work with a modern 'smart'
tape unit.

--
Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal at eyal.emu.id.au) <http://samba.org/eyal/>



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