Patent ID: 7506178

Claim:
A method for rendering re-writable data storage media substantially tamper-resistant, comprising: loading an uninitialized data storage cartridge into a first data storage drive, the data storage cartridge housing a re-writable storage medium and a cartridge memory; reconstructing a read-only cartridge identifier from information read from the cartridge memory; using the cartridge identifier to scramble the contents of at least one predetermined field of each of at least one data set information table (DSIT) to indicate that data written to the medium is write-once data, each DSIT being associated with a corresponding data set of customer data; recording the DSIT fields to the medium to initialize the data storage cartridge; and recording the corresponding data set to medium; whereby, when the initialized data storage cartridge is loaded into a second data storage drive, the cartridge identifier is reconstructed from information read from the cartridge memory and the contents of the at least one scrambled DSIT fields are restorable to their unscrambled state only if the cartridge identifier has not been altered, thereby rendering the customer data sets readable.