Mark,

The answer is "no", of course.  The whole image gets dumped from the
database.  Of course the data is still on the tape until it is reused, so
the data isn't really gone.  It can be re-imported and become *live* again.
A degauser is the only really sure way to zero a tape.

Ah, just curious...your bosses aren't affiliated with Arthur Andersen are
they???????????????


David Anderson
Scripps Information Services

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-----  Snippet of original message.........

My bosses came to me and asked something strange, "Can I expire individual
files?"

While I know that I can't actually expire a file, could I mess around in the
./db/images/<client> directory, perhaps deleting lines from the image
tracking files and achieve effectively the same thing (at least making the
file irretrievable) or will screwing with the sequence in these files make
the entire image invalid.

As it is, I told them that if they want these files "off tape", I'll have to
dump the expire the entire tape and all associated files.