Nick Brockner <nbrockne AT hamilton DOT edu> writes:

> I have an interesting problem.  I have old archive tapes on DAT72
> tapes which I need to move over to my new LTO3 tapes.  The dat72
> changer is on a different server than the new lto3 changer.
>
> What is the best way to migrate the data?

Probably not the best way, but I'll try to describe what I do:

I copy the old tapes to disk, each in a separate directory named 1, 2
and so on. Each "tape file" (the things separated by "file marks") is
copied into on disk file, they are numbered too. Example:

  mkdir 1
  cd 1

  n=0

  while dd if=$TAPE bs=32k of="$(printf '%03d' $n)"
  do
        n=$((n+1))
  done

When I copied enough tapes that will fit on a new tape, I do some
checking, and after that I write the files to a new tape:

  for f in */*
  do
        dd if=$f of=$TAPE bs=32k conv=sync
  done

Afterwards some more checking...

The resulting tape can be used with amrecover, but you can not use the
"amrecover_do_fsf" and "amrecover_check_label" options, because the
amanda database does not know the file positions of the new tape. Its
OK for me, restores from these old tapes are very rare.

I started using this with DLT-IV (35 GB), and now I use LTO-4 (800
GB), so one new tape replaces more than ten old tapes.

        Sven