I recently did that because several tapes were damaged when the robotics was
mis-aligned with some new tape drives and they kept jamming the tapes in.  I
did an audit vol on all local tapes that were being mounted during that
time.  There were some tapes that were totally unreadable, others that had
only a few files that were considered damaged.

I haven't done anything with the offsite tapes.  I guess I should look into
doing that.  Yuck!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Glen Walker [SMTP:Glen.Walker AT TELUS DOT COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 1999 1:17 PM
> To:   ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject:      Verifying 3590 tapes on AIX
>
> We have experienced a significant number of errors over the last few
> months
> on our 3590 tapes in a 3494 tape library. IBM believe that they have
> solved
> the problems that created the errors, but we are faced with the
> uncertainty
> of how many of the tapes in the library might have faults that will only
> show up later. What we want to do is verify all on-site and off-site tapes
> and try to use move data to reclaim from any damaged tapes we find.
>
> My question. Can I use dd to read the tapes simply check for read errors.
> Because ADSM uses variable block sizes I'm not sure what to use in that
> respect. Has anyone had any experience trying to verify the 3590 media?
> I'm
> open to any suggestions.
> Thanks
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> Glen Walker
> Unix System Administrator
> TELUS Communications
> 403.441.7606
> glen.walker AT telus DOT com