Patent ID: 7016137

Claim:
A tape drive apparatus comprising: tape-oriented recording and/or reproducing means for recording and/or reproducing information to and/or from a magnetic tape housed in a tape cassette furnished as a recording medium, said tape cassette being loaded in the apparatus; memory accessing means for accessing a memory which is incorporated in said tape cassette furnished as said recording medium and which holds management information for write and/or read operations to and/or from said magnetic tape, said memory accessing means writing and/or reading information to and/or from said memory following the accessing; information acquiring means for acquiring format state designation information from said memory by causing said memory accessing means to access said memory for information retrieval, said format state designation information designating an unformatted state when said magnetic tape has yet to be formatted, said format state designation information further designating a formatted state once said magnetic tape is formatted; and operation controlling means which, based at least on specifics of the acquired format state designation information and on a result of a read operation on said magnetic tape by said tape-oriented recording and/or reproducing means, controls a write and/or a read operation on said recording medium.