On Thursday 31 July 2003 01:12 pm, elemint@cox.net wrote:
> This tape has data on it backed up from a Windows server running Veritas.
> I wanted to erase the apte and got the following error.
>
>  mt -f /dev/nst0 erase
> mt: /dev/nst0: Input/output error

The Linux 'st' tape driver issues a 'long' erase. Most modern tape drives do 
not recognize the 'long' erase as a valid SCSI command. You can do one of two 
things:
 1) mt -f /dev/st0 rewind ; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/st0 count=1 bs=32768
 2) Use 'scsitape' from the 'mtx' package ( http://mtx.badtux.net ) to issue a 
short erase.

Either one effectively zeros out the tape. I personally just use the 'dd' to 
clear out the tape when I want to get rid of any tape header that might 
confuse my backup software. Just as not all modern tape drives recognize a 
'long' erase, not all tape drives recognize a 'short' erase either. 

Disclaimer: I am the author of 'scsitape', so when I say I just use 'dd', I'm 
probably not biased because else I'd tell you to use my program :-). 

-- 
Eric Lee Green  mailto:eric@badtux.org
Unix/Linux/Storage Software Engineer needs job -- 
see http://badtux.org for resume