Lost Data tarring to 1/4" tape

[Adarsh Sethi]

I am posting this on behalf of a friend who does not have net access. She
has lost research data collected in a foreign country over a period of
about six months. Obviously, any help would be greatly appreciated. Please
reply directly to me and I will forward the replies to her. I will also
post a summary to the list if there is interest.

Adarsh Sethi
sethi at udel.edu
University of Delaware

Forwarded Message:

I was using a Sun Unix workstation with a 4.0 OS and scsi disk, copying my
files onto a 1/4-inch magnetic tape by tar commands. I had put 10 files
(approx 5 MB each) onto my tape, when the command for the alias I had been
using was inadvertently changed to a command without a "no rewind" signal.
In other words, when I skipped over the 10 files already on the tape,
instead of stopping and adding the new file, the tape rewound to the
beginning and copied over the first and possibly the second files.

Now all that I am able to recover from the tape is the last file I added;
then I get an "end of tape" message. My question is: Is there any way to
recover the other files (3 through 10) which should still be on the tape?
mt -f /dev/ nrst 0 fsf 1 does nothing after the first file (i.e., the last
file added).

Thanks in advance,

Kate Davis