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Drive: SONY AIT-4 drive SDX-900V series Ver.2.1

Media: AIT-4 (SDX4-200C)

I am using SCSI commands to try and create 2 partitions on a tape (done the same thing before on VXA & DDS drives). The product specification manual implies that this is supported. I have been using the standard Medium Partitions Parameter Page (11h) to try and do this.

BUT.. Mode Sense always reports 'Maximum Additional Partitions' (byte 2) supported by drive as 0. Tried ignoring this and setting IDP bit to 1, Additional Partitions=1 and a valid partition 1 size (as per manual), but this always fails (reports ASC/ASCQ - 2600h; invalid field in parameter list).

I am programmatically (in C++) writing my own data to one of the partitions and then adding a database of the content into the other. I need to know where I can find this database of content, which is why I would normally use a partition. I also want to be able to eject the tape part way through writing, which will cause the DB to be written and then updated later if more data is added.

Questions

-Does this drive support creating an additional partition or not?

-If it does then what should I be doing differently?

Big GH
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3 Answers3

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The ability to partition an AIT tape was removed with the introduction of AIT-3Ex.

AIT-4 and AIT-5 now only support a single partition.

Big GH
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I have never heard of anyone partitioning a tape drive. I'm not sure such a thing is possible.

The only thing I was able to find was partitioning a tape library. Are you sure you can create a partition on a tape? I'm not sure how such a thing would even work.

Josh Budde
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  • I definitely want to create a partition on the tape. I have done the same on DDS-DAT and VSA tapes in the past. I'll update my question to be more descriptive – Big GH Sep 13 '09 at 06:08
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I've only heard of partitioning a tape library, not an individual tape. Think of the tape library as a hard drive itself, and the tapes inside make up it's capacity. If you partition the library into two partitions, you would allocate X amount of tape slots to one partition, and the rest to the other. One partition works independently of the other, like a hard drive that's partitioned in half.

churnd
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