Reclamation does not in itself change tapes at all....
For primary pools the tape(s) are read in and the portion of the data on the tape still valid is written to another tape... the reclaimed tape then becomes pending for some time (we keep db backups 7 days so that is the reuse delay here for pending tapes). After the reuse delay period the tape goes back into the scratch pool. ...So the tape is not actually written over until mounted for output again. For copy pools the actual tape(s) being reclaimed are never mounted as the data is taken from the associated primary pool. These tapes have the same pending situation but are then marked as empty and vault retrieve... usually a move dr and a checkin after return from the vault are required to get these back in the scratch pool.
Don't get a false sense of security over this, because, everything in TSM is controlled off of the TSM db. If the pointer to the backed up or archived object is gone from the db you are basically sol... unless you keep dbbackups for as long as you might need... and have a non production TSM server to restore to or have some program that can read TSM tapes outside of TSM. (I understand there is one of those floating arounf this website that may work on AIX.)
hope this helps!
Kurt :lol:
