From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Mar 7 15:05:18 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 49CB916A4CE for ; Mon, 7 Mar 2005 15:05:18 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtp11.wanadoo.fr (smtp11.wanadoo.fr [193.252.22.31]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B6CE043D64 for ; Mon, 7 Mar 2005 15:05:17 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr) Received: from me-wanadoo.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mwinf1104.wanadoo.fr (SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 6216E1C000A8 for ; Mon, 7 Mar 2005 16:05:16 +0100 (CET) Received: from pix.atkielski.com (ASt-Lambert-111-2-1-3.w81-50.abo.wanadoo.fr [81.50.80.3]) by mwinf1104.wanadoo.fr (SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 37B731C000A6 for ; Mon, 7 Mar 2005 16:05:16 +0100 (CET) X-ME-UUID: 20050307150516228.37B731C000A6@mwinf1104.wanadoo.fr Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 16:05:15 +0100 From: Anthony Atkielski X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <1145660633.20050307160515@wanadoo.fr> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <200503071447.j27ElWW10343@clunix.cl.msu.edu> References: <1946173739.20050307145644@wanadoo.fr> from "Anthony Atkielski" at Mar 07, 2005 02:56:44 PM <200503071447.j27ElWW10343@clunix.cl.msu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: What's the easiest way to do a backup and verify? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2005 15:05:18 -0000 Jerry McAllister writes: > Actually, if used frequently for backups - such as every day, DAT is > notoriously prone to failure. I've heard this for years, but I've never encountered it, on my own systems or on any others. My drives are HP SureStore SCSI drives. Currently I have BASF tapes, and they've gone through about 40 cycles. I take backups every few days, or whenever there are large changes to the data on the server (most of the time the only changes are log files and things like that). > The only real thing you can do is to read back the tape and look > for a couple of files with fairly high inode numbers for each file > system dumped. If you can read them, you can assume the tape > is readable. I'm surprised there isn't just some way of reading the tape and doing a few simple sanity checks on the data (without comparing it to anything). A drive or tape error would likely show on such checks. -- Anthony