You question was a little vague, but I understood it to mean that you
want to test tapes for integrity, before you load them into your TSM
system.

You didn't mention which platform you're on, but AIX has 'tapeutil'
for most IBM drives (the ones that I've worked with anyway).
'tapeutil' allows you to perform a number of functions -- write
testing is one of them.

The alternative is to produce a test file that fits as closely as
possible on a tape, then use your favourite UNIX utility (tar, dd,
cpio) to copy the file to tape, then test the archive (tar -t for
example) or restore it and compare it with the original if you're
extra-paranoid and have a lot of disk you're not doing anything with.
=)

It should be mentioned though, that before you go through this
process, TSM is capable of detecting write errors (I suppose this
depends on your hardware) and will tag a tape as being 'readonly'
when it discovers that it can't write to it.

All in all, I'd say that if you're worried enough about the tapes to
want to test them, that you should replace them with new tapes, and
recover some funds by auctioning off the tapes on eBay to someone who
might not have such high standards for their backups.  =)

-JD.

Group, I have a slew of tapes I'm trying to validate.  Is anyone
aware of a command to validate whether a tape is bad or not.
Currently I have to wait until TSM tries to write to the tape before
I know the status.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.




BTW, I've searched all references I have to no avail.


Thanks again

Don Owings
Product Operations Manager
CSG Systems Inc.