September 28, 2003
Sometimes it really pays off not to give up
A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled on a small box of 4mm DAT tapes I'd used to backup an Irix (Silicon Graphics' version of UNIX) workstation 9 years ago. I'd forgotten about them. I had trouble trying to read them using an old SCSI Python DAT drive I set up in one of my Red Hat Linux boxes, but I was determined to give it a try anyway.
I joined the Red Hat general support mailing list and solicited opinions on the matter from other listmembers. I received no public reply, and only one private reply from a kind gentleman who offered to read my tapes for me on his personal Irix workstation (an offer I turned down with gratitude for his concern).
Everything I'd read to date seemed to indicate I was wasting my time trying to recover the tapes' contents, citing issues of byte order, block size determination, and related matters. I couldn't accept the general consensus, so I dug into the problem further. You see, before I was a college student, I was a software engineer. Before I was a software engineer, I worked in technical support. So, I am constitutionally unable to let go of what many would insist is a really difficult problem.
My bulldogging paid off: I recovered the files, and here's how I did it. I am, as always, available on a part-time basis to do this work for others: I could use the tuition money right about now...
Posted by Russell Whitaker at September 28, 2003 03:49 PM | TrackBack