We use 3590's and LTO, with copies onsite and offsite. So I don't worry about the reliability of the tape so much as I worry about damage due to bad handling. And I get nervous about the microcode of old tapes being too different from new tapes/drives - which is probably an unnecessary worry, but I'm paranoid that way.
So I have a perl script that runs over the weekend and looks for any tapes that are over 2 years old. Any that it finds, it issues a MOVE DATA xxxxx reconstruct=yes. That means all my tapes, onsite and offsite, are less than 2 years old; no tape has been offsite more than 2 years. It's an automated, low-overhead way of making sure the tapes turnover. That was the best plan I could come up with. -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jon Evans Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 12:19 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Archive Verification Hi Do any of you recall your archive tapes from offsite and verify that the data contained on them can be restored?.. If so how often and what tests do you run to verify that data? Many thanks Jon Enterprise Storage Admin KBR