Subject: Bulk Erasing Cassette Media

From: chris <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat May 24 19:40:08 2003

Ugh... this tape drive is going to be the death of me!

Now that I have a small supply of Maxell tapes for my TEAC MT-2ST/N50 
cassette drive (thanks Don!!!), I've run into the next problem.

All the tapes are reported as "content unknown", and claim to be 60 MB 
(the drive claims to do 150 or 160 depending on which info you pay 
attention to). Neither of those are too big of a surprise as the tapes 
are used, and logically have data that Retrospect on the Mac can't 
understand, and may very well have been written to last with an earlier 
version of the drive (different models support different MB's, and from 
what I can tell, the tapes are all interchangable for writing at max MB, 
and upwards readable so you can read a lower MB tape on a higher MB drive)

However, all the tapes ALSO report that they are locked. Regardless of 
how I set the write protect slide, the tape is still seen as locked. 
Which means I can't erase or write to the tapes.

I opened the drive, and the write protect sense switch appears to be 
physically functional. I have not yet broken down the drive enough to see 
if it is electronically functional (although about the best I can do is 
test for switch continuity in the open and closed positions).

I'm wondering, is it possible they are seen as locked because of the data 
on them? Is there a way to software lock the tapes? Or maybe the locked 
is a side effect of having been last written at a lower MB (some kind of 
a safety to keep you from screwing up the data with a higher MB drive).

If so, is it safe to bulk erase the tapes to wipe the data, or will I 
destroy some kind of a control track as well and render the tape useless? 
I know some kinds of media should not be bulk erased for just that 
reason. I would just give it a go, but since I only have 10 tapes, and 
these have proven a bit tough to locate, I don't want to destroy a tape 
without at least consulting the resident group of experts.

TIA

-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>