LTO-3 "Content Unrecognized"

[Mathys]

Here's the deal, my company was handed 44 LTO-3 Tapes with no additional information regarding them. They hold the media for a feature film on them. The director of the film said he had a drive for reading the tapes, and handed us, what Windows recognizes as an "IBM Ultrium-TD3 SCSI Sequential Device".

 

Our receptionist didn't research a SCSI card for us well enough (one that would work in one of our Mac Pros) and instead ordered a PCI SCSI adapter (The Adaptec 29160). I figured no biggie, and went and bought a low end Acer desktop that had PCI. I'm not sure if it's good thing or not, but it also came with Vista. I was pretty sure I was out of luck there and would need to downgrade, but low and behold everything showed up.

 

The card was properly recognized, and loaded with the latest driver, as did the Tape Drive. Perfect. This is where I was at a loss though, as I'd never heard of any backup software for interfacing with a tape drive, as I'd never done it. Eventually after checking out some film forums, I was referred to Retrospect.

 

I downloaded the trial, loaded it up, and even got the tape to eject. I was feeling great. I learned I needed to restore the catalog, went to do that, and the job never showed up in the list of qued jobs. When I went to check why, the drive status was listed as "Content Unrecognized".

 

Now, I don't even know if Retrospect made the backup. Could that be the problem? These tapes were made while filming on location in China, and it's a bit of a pain to get that sorted what they used.

 

Recap of Devices:

IBM Ultrium-TD3 (Latest Drivers)

LTO-3 Tapes (No idea how much data has been saved onto them)

Adaptec 29160 (Latest Drivers)

Retrospect 7.6 Trial

Acer Aspire AM1641-U1521A

 

Any help here would be a huge help. I need to get these tapes started on their restoration by monday. Thanks in advance.

[rhwalker]

Now, I don't even know if Retrospect made the backup. Could that be the problem? These tapes were made while filming on location in China, and it's a bit of a pain to get that sorted what they used.

Yep. Retrospect has its own proprietary backup format. If another program made the tapes, you will have to use that other program to retrieve the data.

 

Your best avenue of attack is to "get that sorted what they used."

 

Russ