On Mon, 12 Feb 2001, Chris Karakas wrote:
> Some days ago I started the usual daily amflush operation. In the middle
> of this, a power outage occured :-(((. What happens in this case is that
> some of the files in the holding disk have already been transfered to
> tape, so they are not on the holding disk any more. The tape, on the
> other side, did not have its headers updated (not the AMANDA headers,
> but its low level headers - on my system this is done at the end of the
> flushing, after the rewind command is issued), so the drive will not
> find the transfered files on it. The result was that all the transfered
> images were lost :-(
Huh?! Upon reading this I had two distinct reactions:
1) Whatever this device is, it sounds like it no longer conforms to
the commonly accepted definition of a tape drive. Please tell us
what it is so we can avoid buying one. I hope the manufacturer is
honest enough to market it with a large warning label:
"WARNING: This is not your grandfather's tape drive. Data
loss may occur! Buyer beware, etc, etc"
and
2) Are you sure about this? I.e. have you tried a dd against
such a tape and really not been able to pull anything off it?
Also, how exactly does your system update these low level headers?
> My double net strategy saved me: I copied the images from the MO disk
> back to the holding disk and started amflush again :-)
Given you description of this "tape drive"'s operation I would
say you are completely justified in not trusting it. YIKES!!
-Mitch
