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Because some tape drives could only read and write whole (512B) blocks, and the way to be relatively sure that you didn't have a new file was to see two blocks
by DamonHD 3y ago
Because some tape drives could only read and write whole (512B) blocks, and the way to be relatively sure that you didn't have a new file was to see two blocks of zeros.
The Wikipedia item explains this.
- vitiral 3y agoI think I'm confused. You make it sound like the "tape reader" hardware/driver isn't talking to the "file reader" part in software . Didn't the file reader tell the tape reader the size of the file, so it would already know where the end was (how many blocks it should read)?