DAT stands for Digital Audio Tape, a recording medium that uses a rotating helical scan head to write digital data onto a small enclosed tape cassette. Originally developed for studio-grade audio recording, its high capacity and low error rate made it highly popular for enterprise computer data backups. The drives require regular head cleaning to prevent read/write errors.
Heard on the job
Grab the DAT from last night's backup rotation and load it into the server room drive for the restore test.