Hello all, I am looking for some software that is able to perform a forensically sound, bit-by-bit copy of a tape. I deal mostly with LTO, AIT, and DAT. I've already looked at MM/PC but don't really want to pay that much money for it. Any other suggestions would be really appreciated.
Thanks
Greetings,
Could you just use dd? The tape device is just another device to the system. Set the write protect tab and do "dd if=/dev/st0".
-David
If this is the same poster from computerforensicsworld there's an update over there. Essentially, 'dd' can be used, and will need to be used because you'll want to know the block size for every tape you need to acquire and specify that correct block size.
Cheers!
farmerdude
Thanks, ill give it a try and get back to you with the results.
I had another quick question. Lets say one tape drive compresses the information and another tape drive uncompressed it, that wouldn't cause any corruption in the information would it?
Thanks in advance.
Reading a tape, compression is taken care of automatically by the tape drive
To produce a duplicate, you must take care of different block sizes and file marks. Blocks sizes can typically vary between 20 bytes and 512K.
You must also be aware that tapes are appeoximate in their length, so one may be .5% shorter than another. It is best to always duplicate to a higher capacity tape.