Geoff,

you do not know what questions to ask or they are classified and you
cannot ask them :-)
If you need to hold classified material - do not mix it with
non-classified and the problem is eliminated from the beginning.
Collocation ought to help and you may consider usage of separate stgpools
(both primary and copy) over same devclass to ensure separation of data.
This might answer to "how to retrieve classified tape" question.
If you need to ensure data does not exist anymore on the tape cartridge
you have at least two options
- usage of a drive to write some fill pattern over whole tape before
retrieve from secure vault and reuse
- simple degauss and recycle the cartridge - more expensive but might be
acceptable depending on security requirements
Other possibilities can also be invented after few minutes of thought.

Zlatko Krastev
IT Consultant






"Gill, Geoffrey L." <GEOFFREY.L.GILL AT SAIC DOT COM>
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
24.09.2002 01:08
Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager"


        To:     ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
        cc:
        Subject:        Reading data from tape


I hope someone has a real good knowledge of how TSM data is written
to/read
from tape. I'm in a predicament that I may never be able to get tapes back
to read any node data off of them unless I can satisfactorily answer
questions. Unfortunately I don't know the questions yet so I don't even
know
what to ask here. Perhaps someone who is knowledgeable about 3590 tape
technology or someone from Tivoli monitoring the list can help with this.
I
hate to have to call Tivoli since so far I haven't got much in the way of
answers on the other questions I've been asking on classified material on
tape.

What kind of questions would you expect to answer if a tape was removed
from
the library with mixed node data on it and it was needed to restore some
other node's data. Keep in mind that the tape was removed because it
originally had classified material stored on it. It may or may not still
have the data depending on expiration. I already know how to explain the
ins
and outs of expiration/reclamation but we all know the "DATA" is really
still there. My guess is I'm never really going to be able to get these
tapes back and whatever data was on them is probably gone forever but I
need
to at least be able to answer some questions like are they indexed or how
the data is stored, how it's read back etc.

Thanks for the help,
Geoff Gill
TSM Administrator
NT Systems Support Engineer
SAIC
E-Mail:    <mailto:gillg AT saic DOT com> gillg AT saic DOT com
Phone:  (858) 826-4062
Pager:   (877) 905-7154