Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 10:47:11 +1000 From: anubis <anubis357@optusnet.com.au> To: "Rick Duvall" <rduvall@onlinehighways.net>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Verifying integrity of Backup Tapes Message-ID: <200311021047.11932.anubis357@optusnet.com.au> In-Reply-To: <000701c3a031$00b09500$f901a8c0@ws21> References: <000701c3a031$00b09500$f901a8c0@ws21>
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On Sat, 1 Nov 2003 02:31 pm, Rick Duvall wrote: > I have some backup tapes that I have been using each once per week for > about 8 months. I am getting errors when running amverify on a couple of > them. To be sure that my tapes are still good and not just the system > giving me fits, it would be nice if I could run a program that would write > bits to the tape in question and try to read them back, telling me which > blocks on the tape are bad. Is there such a tool that does this? I guess > it would be kind of like a scandisk is to a DOS Floppy as what I am talking > about is to a Unix Tape. > > Sincerely, > > Rick Duvall > Online Highways > System Administrator > (541) 997-8401 x 111 > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to > "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" If I get errors on tapes I bin them immediately. Tapes wear and they do have a life span which varies from tape to tape. If you are backing up something it is obviously important so take no chances in loosing it. On my windows system I have the o/s backup set to verify to make sure the data is ok. When it crashed and had to be restored from tape I found that 2 of the tapes that were verified couldnt be read. The tapes were about a year old. The amount of money the company lost from having an old tape could have paid for a new server, several tape drives and media. The lesson I learnt was tapes are cheap, turn over frequently. Remember with dds technology they are a helical scan head. Tapes backed up on one dds drive are not necessarily readable by any other dds drive as I found out the hard way. Look at DLT as an alternative. Whatever you get make sure you add in a 3 year warranty. Get one from hp or ibm. We had our hp fail at 4pm. Had a new one on site 10am next day. They only fail when you really need them.
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