DDS/DAT notes

These are some general notes on DAT and DDS drives.

I fell into this rabbit-hole after someone gave me a HP DAT72 drive, and I picked up a Tascam DAT deck and a couple of Archive DAT-capable drives. DAT has since become my go-to for data interchange between older and newer systems, especially under UNIX or where I have a SCSI card available in the origin machine. (generally I use LTO for more modern platforms).

My usual route is to fit a DDS-3 or DDS-4 drive in the source system, and use a HP Storageworks USB DAT72 to read the tape on a newer PC.

For recovering data from old tapes, I use a mix of the drives below:

• DAT-Audio, DDS-1: Archive 4320 (DAT-Audio firmware) or or 4326 (DAT-Audio firmware).
• DAT-Audio, DDS-2: Archive 4326 (DAT-Audio firmware).
• DDS-3, DDS-4/DAT40 and DAT72: HP Storageworks DAT72 USB

I've yet to acquire a DAT80 or DAT160 drive or media. I suspect that most DAT users didn't go much beyond DAT72, and specified LTO when they upgraded. AIT and DLT were also available at the time, but the majority of used tapes I've seen on the market have been DAT or LTO.

This table only includes the drives I have personally used, and the variants I know of. Where a variant I have not personally used is listed, DAT Audio support is listed as “” (unknown).

Make and model	DAT Audio	DDS-1 60m (1.3/2.6GB)	DDS-1 90m (2/4GB)	DDS-2 120m (4/8GB)	DDS-3 125m (12/24GB)	DDS-4 150m (20/40GB)	DDS-5 / DAT-72 170m (36/72GB)	Notes
Archive 4320NT (25601) v2.xx	EPROM swap	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	Firmware >2.19 needed for 90min/2GB tapes. Firmware >2.96 needed for reliable use of MRS tapes. See this page.
Conner CTD2004-S
Seagate STD12000N
Archive 4326NP (01931)	Flash	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	See http://web.archive.org/web/20030203020852/http://www.seagate.com:80/support/kb/tape/dat8_md.html Good drive for DAT-audio.
Conner CTD8000R-S								Post Seagate buyout of Archive
IBM 59H2683, 59H2681								IBM version with black tape door, blue eject button and IBM-styled front.
HP SureStore DAT 4/8	No	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	Not recommended: Used drives tend to be dead (even new-old-stock ones), with servo and Drum PG failures.
Seagate STD24000N (04106)	No	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	Good narrow-SCSI drive, with DDS-3 tapes pairs well with HP DAT72 USB for easy exchange with newer machines. Media compatibility - see http://web.archive.org/web/20000411054007/http://www.seagate.com:80/support/kb/tape/dat24_md.html
Seagate STD2401LW (06408)	No	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	Good all-round DDS-4 Wide SCSI drive with good format compability. 68-pin interface with Narrow/Wide jumper, should work with 50-to-68-pin adapters. AKA “Scorpion 40”.
Sony SDT-10000	No	❔	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	Good all-round DDS-4 Wide SCSI drive with good format compability. 68-pin interface. Narrow/Wide support unknown.
HP StorageWorks DAT72 USB	No	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	✅	Decent later-DDS drive. Good for reading and writing later (DDS3+) tapes.
HP StorageWorks DAT72 SCSI	No	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	✅	Needs a terminating SCSI adapter when used on narrow SCSI buses, no Wide/Narrow jumper.

Notes:

• ✅: Read and write
• 👓: Read only
• ❌: No support
• General notes:
  • 60-metre (1.3GB) DDS-1 is rarely seen. 90-metre is more common.
  • DDS-2 drives will usually read and write 60- and 90-metre DDS-1
  • DDS-3 drives will usually read and write 60- and 90-metre DDS-1 and 120-metre DDS-2
  • DDS-4 drives will usually read and write 120-metre DDS-2 and 125-metre DDS-3, and sometimes 90-metre DDS-1 (Seagate STD2401, STD6401, per this Seagate page)
• Archive 4320 and variants:
  • DDS-1 uncompressed only, no DDS-DC data compression support.
  • There are two variants of this drive. V2.xx Firmware is ROM-based, on Python hardware. v5.xx is Peregrine-based.
• DAT Audio – see:
  • DAT FAQ
  • Audio on a computer DAT drive
  • http://www.hoxnet.com/dat-tools/ – firmware for the Sony SDT, Archive series, etc.

• If the drive powers up and passes selftest, but won't read or write, try feeding it a DDS cleaning cartridge four or five times.

This section has an extremely long list of names, because of the chain of ownership of this company.

What started out as Archive (or possibly Ardat), was bought by Conner, then bought by Seagate, spun off as Certance, and finally bought by Quantum.

Quantum DLT and LTO drives seem to be from a different pedigree.

From: Seagate DAT installation manual, Interpreting Seagate tape model numbers

Which decodes as …

4320 exists in two variants: firmware v2.xx is Python (OTP ROM), v5.xx is Peregrine (Flash/EEPROM).

The STD-series drives are from the Scorpion family (see this page) and have a native transfer rate of 550Kbytes/sec, vs. the 400Kbytes/sec of the previous drives.

The STD224000N has a native transfer rate of 1.1Mbytes/sec.

STD2401LW is DDS-4, 20GB native (40GB compressed). Certance sold this drive as the CD40. Transfer rate is quoted at 9.9GB/hour, which is around 2.75 megabytes per second. The Quantum firmware update isn't archived, but the Dell version is: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-uk/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=mxmf3

• Seagate firmware page (archived)
• Diagnostic utilities
  • Seatools Tape Diagnostic v4.01
• Firmware
  • DDS-3 (STD24000N) firmware: rev 7550.
  • DDS-4 (STD2401) firmware: 825B and 912L
  • DDS-5/DAT-72 (CD72) firmware: version A16K (Dell), version A060
    • Quantum list the latest version as VA1AD000 (see (url))

Generally speaking, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine:

• Archive - no known website
• Conner - TBD
• Seagate
  • Spec sheets
  • Model number decoder

Some manuals are stored on Bitsavers:

• http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/archive/
• http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/conner/tape/
• http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/seagate/tape/

I've found these drives to be extremely unreliable – both drives I have (one was new in box) were dead with “servo hung” and “drum PG lost” errors. I haven't been able to fix these drives, it seems to be a tape transport issue.

They are “okayish” as a source of parts – there are some fast amplifiers, a 68EC000 processor, and RAMs and ROMs on the mainboard.

HPE have removed most of the software for their earlier drives from their website. The last remaining holdouts are:

• Library and Tape Tools version 4.28sr2:

  curl -fL -o "hpe_ltt428_hpux_1123.tar" https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-generic/p1910951539/v168197/hpe_ltt428_hpux_1123.tar
  curl -fL -o "hpe_ltt428_hpux_1131.tar" https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-generic/p1910951539/v168197/hpe_ltt428_hpux_1131.tar
  curl -fL -o "hpe_ltt428_linux_x86.tar" https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-generic/p1910951539/v168197/hpe_ltt428_linux_x86.tar
  curl -fL -o "hpe_ltt428_linux_x86_64.tar" https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-generic/p1910951539/v168197/hpe_ltt428_linux_x86_64.tar
  curl -fL -o "hpe_ltt428_mac.dmg" https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-generic/p1910951539/v168197/hpe_ltt428_mac.dmg
  curl -fL -o "hpe_ltt428_solaris_amd64.tar" https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-generic/p1910951539/v168197/hpe_ltt428_solaris_amd64.tar
  curl -fL -o "hpe_ltt428_solaris_sparc.tar" https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-generic/p1910951539/v168197/hpe_ltt428_solaris_sparc.tar
  curl -fL -o "hpe_ltt428_win.exe" https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-generic/p1910951539/v168197/hpe_ltt428_win.exe
  curl -fL -o "HP-I64VMS-LTT-V0428--1.ZIPEXE" https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-generic/p1910951539/v168197/HP-I64VMS-LTT-V0428--1.ZIPEXE

  • I've had very little luck getting this to work on recent Linux systems, it needs to be run on a kernel with `/proc/scsi` support. See this HP forum thread for more on that.
  • Manual for v3.5sr2
  • Support guide (end user edition)

The files below are for the SDT-10000 and are untested.

The diagnostic tool for Sony DAT/DDS drives is TapeTool.

• Sony TapeTool for Windows v1039 03-Jul-2009
• Sony TapeTool for Linux v3.1
• Sony SDT-10000 firmware version 0200