>I'm still getting the same error message.  It picks up the tape, sees there
is catalog 
>information on the tape, then freezes it.

Yes, that's exactly what NB does.  It's an unfortunate behavior, bordering
on a bug.

For this reason, I've always kept my NB database tapes with a different
barcode scheme
so they don't get recycled back into the scratch pool but rather into "DB
tape pool".  
Let's say you sent a box of tapes off-site with a db tape.  If you just dump
the box 
into the silo when it comes back, you'll end up with a frozen tape for the
db tape unless
NB knows to segregate that tape and use it for NB database backups only.

The only alternative is to use bplabel to zap the tape (or degaussing it, I
suppose).

--
Drew Fabbro
fabbro.andrew AT cnf DOT com 
Desk: 503-450-3374    Cell: 503-701-0369
"How can I be losing to this idiot?"
  -- chess grandmaster Aaron Nimzovich