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." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 24.09.2002 01:08 Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (858) 826-4062 Pager: (877) 905-7154