Can anyone identify this older program?
 

i have a bunch of old DDS data tapes i cant do anything with because i dont know the program they where written with.
they where with some VHS tapes and during a capture a menu screen popped up and was recorded on the VHS tape.
i think this is the program i need.
screenshots:

Attachment 2520

Attachment 2521

http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...8/SnapShot.jpg
http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/.../SnapShot0.jpg

There were so many programs that it would be hard to guess.
- Was this Mac, DOS or Windows? And which version was likely?
- Around what year was the backup taken?

im pretty sure it was a windows 98 system
this tape was from 2000
i think they used this to insert text/graphics into the tracks video system

Try Backup Exec, it was contemporary at the time, and fully supported DAT drives. It should be noted that it shared the same "Microsoft Tape" format as the NTBackup program included with Windows NT 4.0/2000/XP, but there is no guarantee that it will read the tapes. Heck give NTBackup or the tape backup program that came with Windows 98 (they aren't cross compatible) a try. I purposely keep a Windows 98 machine around for things like this, it also happens to have a SCSI DDS2 DAT drive installed in it.

no dice - already tried that
also tried:

• Veritas Backup
• Arc serve
• EMC retrospect
• datman
• windat
• vdat

i have over 50 of these tape and no idea what is on them

i have even sent a tape to a pro service and they sent back a
file a with an unrecognizable format , no file ext and cant tell me how to open it

all he said was he did a hex dump on it and thinks it is a graphics file.

One thing I would be concerned about is if newer versions of backup software can read tapes archived with older versions. Backup Exec has changed company hands many times over the years and its bound to have changed file formats and dropped support for older backups. Another program to try (if you can find it) is Colorado Backup. It was around for a LONG time and has DOS and Windows versions.

HP has the last version (9.1) available for download: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...tem=co-10418-1
It likely doesn't work on Windows XP, so be prepared to install Windows 98/ME or 2000.

Version 9.0 can be found here: ftp://ftp.acsbc.net/_Drivers/Colorado%20Backup/

What did Conner Tape Backup drives come with? (edit: a version BackupExec)

There's a chance you have the right program, but the tape failed.
This wasn't uncommon. Here's an old topic from 1998: http://forums.serverwatch.com/archiv...p/t-16096.html

I also vaguely recall the ability to "encrypt" a tape backup by storing the first bits of data on a floppy.
Or/and that you had to read the tapes in a specific order -- not random.

I hated tape backups. I quit using them in 1995 after borrowing a CD burner every 6 months, until buying my own a few years later. In those days, the CD burners were SCSI drives using DOS tools (Adaptec software). I remember 650MB was bigger than my whole hard drive in those days. It took two whole CD-R to backup a computer that was Doublespaced (DOS 6).

I was able to recover data off of a DAT tape I had made with Backup Exec around 1999 or so back in December of 2010. The tape wasn't stored in any special place and it recovered all the data 100% which really surprised me. A Travan tape I had laying around wasn't so lucky, but that tape was backed up to multiple times (shouldn't use backup tapes after so many passes), plus Travan tapes weren't known for their durability.

this is the file the Advanced Downloading sent me
i had to cheat and add a .rar file extension to it to get it to upload.
but it came to me without any file extension

Or you could have put the file inside a .rar or .zip -- cheating not needed. ;)

yeah...i didnt think of that
he said there was a a bunch of these file on the tapes.

this tape drive stuff is before my time and im kinda lost.

Looking in a Hex viewer revels what looks to be a "Magic Number" for the file format, namely "MDOC4DPF3". This is what programs usually look for to determine file type when opening.