I purchased a HP Colorado 5GB tape. I installed it on my IDE 2^ slave chennel, and it works: I performed some TAR CVF /DEV/HT0, TAR TVF /DEV/HT0, all right. I don't use ftape, but directly standard commands that apparently run. But after some testing with tar and cpio, my tape is no more usable: I get an error when I insers my tape in the cartrige. I tested tape with WIN95 itilities from HP, but when I format, I obtain an error. I purchased another tape cassette, I tried it again, again some times goes correctly, then it is broken. My cassette code is C4429 In HP documentation, I see "dont format units with other nonHP utilities: they erase some magnetic markers from tape". I suspect that my problem show up when I write on tape more data than physical capacity, so I erase marker, my be. I am using the wrong hardware product ? I need only a low-cost, not-fast but solid backup hardware for my 8 internet computers. (I would use a backup drive for computer, so I can perform backup in the night, without overcharge network traffic).
