At 12:09 PM 4/7/99 -0400, you wrote:
>If I have a tape that is no longer readable, is there any difference between
>doing
>  AUDIT FIX=YES or doing
>  DELETE volser DISCARDDATA=YES
>???

YES.  They are different.

An audit will only delete those files on the tape that are unreadable.  A
delete volser will delete all the files on the tape, regardless of whether
they are readable or not.

Note that the audit process can take quite a while (days) to audit a tape
with a bad spot on it.  I've got an audit going now that's been running for
many days.  The logic (at least for DLT tapes, dunno about others) is that
if/when audit encounters a file that it cannot read (because of a bad spot
on the tape), it will reposition the tape (LOCATE) to the next file.  In
order to do this (on DLT) the tape must first be rewound, and then a LOCATE
(or SEEK) is done to the tape block fo the next file.  One other thing I am
noticing is that the timeout for the READ that eventually fails can take
hours.  So - each file that cannot be read can take hours to process.  Not
a pretty site if the bad spot on tape contains many files.  If you've got
small files on the bad spot, this makes things take longer.

The above description is based on empirical evidence, and some
conversations I had with one of the developers a couple of years ago in
response to an APAR I had opened about this.  Audit used to simply give up
after encountering the first bad file, and mark the rest of the files on
tape as bad.  It no longer does this.  At least for DLT.

If you have copy storage pools, then you can just get the files off of
those tapes.

..Paul