>> But apart from that, dd is *not* a usable tool.
>> This is a typical example when Unix tools fail miserably. Tapes have
>> records, of perhaps different lengths. You need to preserve this
>> meta-information when copying tapes, or the copy will not actually be the
>> same as the original, even though you have the same bytes on both.

I don't know of any tape that varies record lengths within a single _file_
on the tape. Typically tape formats are :

	<FM> record <RM> record <RM> record <FM> record_type2 <RM> ... <FM><FM>

If anyone has a counter example please let me know! There may be variable
length records within the fixed length records (witness tar archives) but
records between two file marks are the same size. dd should be able to
figure this out. If I had a working copy of this tape I could help figure
it out :-)

--Chuck