Patent ID: 7100010

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 may be incorporated in said tape cassette separately from said magnetic tape, said memory holding 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 conditional information from said magnetic tape by causing said tape-oriented recording and/or reproducing means to reproduce from the tape said conditional information, said conditional information indicating whether a memory priority mode is present, said memory priority mode indicating that said management information from said memory must be examined before writing and/or reading information to and/or from said magnetic tape; and operation controlling means which, based at least on consistency between specifics of the acquired conditional information and a result of suitable access to said memory by said memory accessing means when said memory priority mode is present, controls a write and/or a read operation on said magnetic tape.