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I have a lot of DLT IV Tape Cartridges which were used and written to in DLT 4000 drives.

Now I have a DLT VS 160 drive, which uses the same Tape Cardridges but I can't write onto them.

Searching the net I found only hints that tapes must be unformatted for usage in VS 160 drives, so they can format these with their higher native density.

Is it possible to "force" a reformat of such a tape in a VS 160 drive or is my only option to buy or lend a bulk degausser?

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  • If you degauss a DLT cartridge it becomes unusable. Degaussing removes the factory-written servo tracks - they cannot be rewritten.
    – Zac67
    Feb 23, 2020 at 18:32
  • @Zac67 I think you confuse DLT with LTO. See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Linear_Tape#Media
    – PoC
    Feb 23, 2020 at 20:01
  • That's possible. I know that SDLT uses optical servos, but previous drives used magnetic servos, including the DLT 4000 - they may be able to rewrite the servo information though.
    – Zac67
    Feb 23, 2020 at 20:16

1 Answer 1

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Unfortunately it looks like VS160 and DLT4000 formats exist on two different tape types, and it doesn't look like they are supported by the same tape drives. The DLT4000 drive goes with DLT IV tapes, whereas the DLT-VS160 drive goes with VS1 tapes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Linear_Tape for more.

If data destruction is your goal, you could always snip the end off and feed the ribbons (of several tapes at once) through a heavy-duty paper shredder... or burn/melt them. That data is GOOONE!

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  • I have one DLTIV Tape which was sealed original and I can perfectly read and write to it on the VS-160 drive. And no, it's not about destruction. I want to recycle (reuse) them.
    – PoC
    Dec 30, 2019 at 20:15

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