Patent ID: 7000068

Claim:
A recording and playback apparatus comprising: magnetic tape drive means for reading/writing a data file including a plurality of data in units of recording regions which are formed by dividing a magnetic tape in each of a plurality of tape cartridges, each recording region having a predetermined capacity; tape cartridge changing means for accommodating the plurality of tape cartridges including a plurality of data files, selecting a specific tape cartridge from among the plurality of tape cartridges, and conveying the selected tape cartridge to the magnetic tape drive means; hard disk drive means including a hard disk having at least a cache area which is used when the magnetic tape drive means reads/writes said plurality of data files, said hard disk drive means storing at least one recording region of each data file of said plurality of data files representing the beginning of said each data file in the cache area of said hard disk, wherein when said plurality of data files is requested to be played back substantially simultaneously, said hard disk drive means accesses said at least one recording region of each data file while remaining recording regions of said each data file are subsequently written on the cache area of said hard disk; and control means including at least a schedule-controlling unit which selects a data file whose remaining time for playback is the shortest when a plurality of different data files on the magnetic tapes in the plurality of tape cartridges are played back while the data files are sequentially written on the cache area of the hard disk, the remaining time for playback being calculated based on a currently played back position and a writing end position in the cache area on which data of a predetermined number of recording regions is written, wherein said scheduling-controlling unit causes said plurality of different data files to be playback in order from the data file whose remaining time for playback is the shortest to a data file whose remaining time for playback is the longest.