If you're concerned about discovery in the legal sense then simple
re-labeling is not enough because it doesn't over-write most of the tape
and as Darren and I pointed out if it's important enough to be worth the
cost it is possible to recover the parts of the tape that didn't get
overwritten.

If you're worried about legal discovery on the tape then you need to
destroy it or at least overwrite it completely several times.

Dave Werth
Garmin AT, Inc.
Salem, Oregon
-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of Len Philpot
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 6:31 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Discoverability of backups... ?

> A Darren Dunham <ddunham AT TAOS DOT COM>
>
> It's virtually impossible to read past the last write on a tape
without
> special equipment.
>
> If a tape has been relabeled, consumer drives won't read anything past
> the newly written label, so the tape is pretty effectively erased.  I
> don't think this happens with 9-track tape, but it does with
> DLT/AIT/LTO.  Only thing I can think of at this point would be to send
> to a recovery house that should have modified firmware drives
available.

That sounds good to me - So, once it's labeled, it's effectively gone.
I'm
not looking to retrieve anything, but rather to have a reasonable
expectation of non-discovery once a tape is relabeled.

Thanks for the info

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