Hi! I am using a RS6000 system with Unix. Each night I have a backup of the entire system using the tar command. My tape drive went bad and I have lost many (2 months) backups. One was at the end of the year and cannot be recovered. How may I prevent this from happening again? How can I be sure my system is working? How can I be sure I have a good backup each night? Thanks in advance.

After you perform a backup, list the files in the backup. With tar, it has to read through the whole backup to get the list. A further test would be to restore the last file on the backup.

Is there an quicker way? If I use the tar command to view the backup contents and it shows me a date and time on the tape, can I be sure I have a good backup?

Also, Is there a way to check a tape drive to see if it is bad?

Will Smit let me see the tar backup quicker?

The limiting factor is going to be the tape drive -- it's not likely that using a different program will speed it up. There's no way to avoid reading the data back when checking if the data's good or not.

Verifying your backup data every time you make it will tell you when your tape drive is going bad.