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First of all, I'm not sure if this is the best place to ask this question. I was torn between SF and SU, but I decided for SF when I saw that questions about tape drives are scarce in SU.

I need to manage a tape drive from windows. I'm using mtx, and it works great but it seems a bit rough in the edges. I've just stumbled upon the documentation for BSD's mt, and seems just what I need. I have searched for a windows version to no avail.

Is there a windows version? If not, is there any similar app for windows (which hopefully works for linux, too)?

raven
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3 Answers3

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I do not have a tape drive to test with, but this version of MT for Windows:

http://www.tecno-notas.com/winnt.htm

does claim to support seeking by filemarks.

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http://www.holistech.co.uk/sw/mt/mt.html

MT.exe - command line Windows NT/2000/XP tape utility (GPL)

MT was written to erase an old (tar) backup tape which Windows-XP backup refused to overwrite... but I got curious along the way, and added support for various tape functions:

Erase (Long and short)
Drive and tape status (full details of TAPE_GET_DRIVE_PARAMETERS and TAPE_GET_MEDIA_PARAMETERS structures)
Format (QIC117 only according to the documentation)
Load and unload (eject) a tape
Lock and unlock the tape in the drive
Repartition the tape (if your drive supports it)
Read/dump from tape to a file
Seek by absolute address
Retension the tape
Rewind the tape

so it is a cut down version of the rsm command, but without the complexity (which doesn't seem to be in the published API anyway...)

TheCleaner
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  • Thank you very much. I'm testing it, but I'm afraid it won't suit my needs. In particular, I need the ability to seek by filemarks (fsf[m]/bsf[m] in mt/mtx). Being able to partition tapes sounds very nice, though. – raven Oct 29 '13 at 13:46
  • Yeah, I wasn't sure what all features you were looking for, so that was the closest I could find (and the name fit...lol) – TheCleaner Oct 29 '13 at 13:53
  • The Removable Storage Management (RSM) has gone for good. The latest available version has been rolled out with Server 2003. – the-wabbit Oct 29 '13 at 13:54
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    I forgot to mark this as an answer. Didn't suit my needs, but it answers the question. – raven Aug 13 '14 at 08:45
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I also needed a reliable mt on Windows 10.

The most reliable I found is Hamilton C shell's mt version.

They offer a full working demo version. If one wish to run mt.exe independently, then license is required.

gsl
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