The OnStream Data Recovery Project

OnStream tapes saw use primarily as a backup storage medium during the early 2000s mostly in Europe due to their affordability.
Unfortunately, OnStream ceased operations due to bankruptcy in 2003 and never had the longevity that other tapes had.
Not only are the drives rare today, but they are also prone to failure and have numerous software and compatibility difficulties which make it annoying to dump the contents of the tape.
So when I was put in a position of needing to recover data from OnStream tapes, it took a lot of effort to recover data.
I've put together this guide so that hopefully someone else doesn't also need to spend months on this.
I am available to help with OnStream data recovery for the current time, my contact info is on my GitHub profile page.

Dumping Guide

I would strongly recommend reading through this guide without skimming it (I have ADHD so I'm serious when I say this), because if you make the wrong choice, you might make your work MUCH harder.

The guide has been broken into several sections:

1. Introduction
2. What drive do you need?
3. Determining the original software.
4. Raw Dump Only: Understanding how the data is stored on the tape for raw dumps
5. Raw Dump Only: Performing a raw dump
6. Troubleshooting

Unfortunately, the guide can only go so far. I've done my best to document everything, but the guide is just a starting point.
I've done my best to include as many tools, documentation, and information as possible throughout this repository, and hopefully the guide can give proper context.

General FAQ/Notes

• How does this jumper block thing work? Don't worry too much about it. Most of the SCSI PCI cards out there have an automatic termination setting enabled by default in the BIOS settings, and if you're not connecting any other SCSI devices, then it doesn't matter what ID is set.
• It is possible to use a 68pin to 50pin SCSI converter for the SCSI-2 based devices, but only if the converter properly terminates the 8-bit portion of the bus. Any competent adapter should do this automatically.
• It is a good idea to manually spin the tape wheel a little bit before putting a tape in a drive. Due to the age of these tapes, they seem prone to tearing if some manual spinning is not done first.

Helpful Resources

• Archived Data
• OnStream Website Archive
• 'osst' Linux Driver Website
• 'osst' Driver Source Code (Original Repository ¹)
• Aaru Data Preservation Suite

Footnotes

1. The files shown on the website are not actually the full repository, instead the CVS repo must be directly connected to. For this reason, the Github mirror is preferred. ↩