I don't recall Tivoli saying it that way.

Of course, the data can be read.  It's just 1's and 0's.  The problem lies
in making any sense out of the data that you read.  You can, in fact see
data on the tape and sometimes get information off the data tapes without a
DB tape.  Text files will come through without a problem.  Trying to
decipher a Word document is probably possible if you go to the trouble to
sort it all out - I've never tried.  You can read a data stream from the
tapes - but the data is all in aggregates and might even be partial files
from adaptive differencing.

There is no supported way to restore data to a file system the way it came
off a file system - that is what Tivoli said as far as I recall.  If they
said you can't read the tapes, I don't think they should have because that
isn't accurate.

Bill Smoldt
STORServer, Inc.