Re: Ultrium 4 Tape Initialization

[DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sadly the 'Just Initialize It!' mentality DOES run through nearly every 
shop.  It's a Land Mine of course, accidentally leave the wrong tape in 
the drive and it becomes DAILY sometime around midnight......

I have long preached unique volume IDs. A tape gets a number FOR LIFE 
and the number dies with the tape. If you get in to tape library land 
you cannot live any way but this but you should even with single tape 
drives.  Years ago back in the open reel tape days we did this. A user 
did something stupid (I know, hard to believe) and essentially ruined 
one table. I looked at the table and it told me which tape it had been 
backed up on the night before. I asked my operator to mount that tape 
and recovered the file. The operator came back in a bit later and said 
"Why that volume, that's for tonight's backup?".  "The volume labels do 
not lie."  Then she figured out she had made a mistake and used the 
wrong tape. So the system was right and the data was right, proper 
volume names to the rescue.

As was also mentioned the error counts and total read/write counts are 
also kept by volume so when you're having issues with volume DAILY, 
which one?

Anyway. FIX IT, before data loss occurs.

 - Larry

> John,
>
> 	You are exactly right in what should be done for tape management.
> You would be surprised how many places do what your shop does.
>
> 	Pete
>
> Pete Massiello
> iTech Solutions
> http://www.itechsol.com
>