Take a look at the FATS/FATAR product from www.fdr.com. It has the
capability of reading pass EOF on 3592 tapes.


-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Allen S. Rout
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 10:25 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: Physically shred tape after one use? [ email retention ]

>> On Fri, 8 Feb 2008 07:49:11 -0500, Richard Rhodes
<rrhodes AT FIRSTENERGYCORP DOT COM> said:


> Are you talking about "discoverable" meaning the legal term
> "discovery", or as in "snoopable", meaning somebody gets access to
> your media because it falls off a truck or they walk out the door
> with it?

The former. :P

> We have had this conversation with our email folks here.  I have
> explained that, YES, the previous data is sitting there past the
> defined deletion period.  YES, it is possible to access it on a very
> expensive fishing expedition.

I think the problem here is that many people, coming to this question
fresh, try to set policy without understanding what we (backup admins)
mean when we say things like "This is expensive", vs. "This is
difficult" vs. "This is extremely difficult", and what-not.

When I talk about special equipment and gobs of staff time (I don't
think a stock 3592 will seek beyond logical EOT, will it?)  I seem to
get feedback that tastes of "Oh, so it's possible, right?".

Yeah, if you want to pay mumblety-thousand dollars to a recovery unit,
you can get your bitstream back off the end of the tape (singular).
Put another mumblety-thousand dollars in staff time in, and you can
probably pick out email-looking stuff.  Is this part of our policy
response to discovery?  Probably not.

But when someone says to me "This data must not be recoverable, even
through extraordinary measures", I shudder, and prepare to repel
boarding by the NSA.


- Allen S. Rout
- Why bother, they already know.