Count of writing on tape

[Raja_2]

Hi,

I'd like to know, how i can find count of writing on tape. I know, there is possibility to use expert tool. However, I guess, it has to exist another way. :)

Ten points for right answer. :)


Thanks a lot

Radim

[Jeff Machols]

Radim,

Im not sure what you are looking for,but if you are using fbackup, you can do this.

Extract the index from the tape

frecover -I /tmp/index -f dev

There is field called Media Use that will tell you how many times the media has been used for a backup

[Raja_2]

Hi Jeff,

I want to find how many times I used to tape.

For instance. I have new tape and I use it every day and after month I need to know that the tape was used to 31 times.

Radim

[Jeff Machols]

Are you using fbackup/frecover?

[Jeff Machols]

If you are using frecover, just run

frecover -V /tmp/index_file -f device_name

if you look at /tmp/index_file the field called media use will show what you are looking for. If you are using tar or cpio or something like that, there is no way to tell

[Raja_2]

No. I don't

[Jeff Machols]

what do you use?

[Raja_2]

It doesn't matter,

For instance, I use tape for tar files,
next day for fbackup and next day for tar again.

[Jeff Machols]

The only thing you can do is setup a wrapper script around your backup and keep track of it yourself.

[Darrell Allen]

Hi,

You can't know how many times a tape has been written on. Some backup software (OmniBack for example) keeps track of how many times it has written on a tape. But it is possible to re-initialize tapes so that the backup software loses that count.

If you overwrite a tape with tar, dd, cpio, etc you will lose the count.

I suppose if you used new tapes, never wrote to them with anything other than your normal backup utility, and never re-initialized them you could get the count (providing the backup utility supported a count).

Darrell

[Raja_2]

Thanks for reply,

but today I saw this information in msmt tool.
Maybe I'm wrong, but ...
It looks I'll have to do it some script around my backup script, how jeff wrote me.

[Darrell Allen]

Hi Radim,

Would you please post what you did and saw related to:
<< but today I saw this information in msmt tool >>

I'm curious if this is something I've been missing.

Thanks,
Darrell

[Raja_2]

So,

Today I had hardware problem with my DAT. The guy from hp support used mstm tool and showed me information, how many times i used my tape.
he also said me that it special tool in msmt, which can test tape and show a lot of information about tape. I suppose that exists another way how to find this information.

That's all. :)

Radim

[Thierry Poels_1]

Hi,

as far as I know there is no tool to check how many times a tape has been used; I don't even think this is possible.

fbackup records times used on the tape. But as soon as you use another utility (tar, dd, ...) the fbackup header will be gone, and a next fbackup will start counting from 0 again.

regards,
Thierry.

[Darrell Allen]

Hi again,

I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I just don't believe there is any way to load a tape and tell how many times it has been written to. Further, even if there are utilities that read a header from the tape and re-write it, the header would be lost if the tape was demagnetized.

How about following up with the HP person who ran mstm and let us know what he says?

Thanks,
Darrell

[Deshpande Prashant]

HI

The omniback software tracks the write count on a media, since it was last initialized.
You can initialize the media to reset the counter.

Thanks
Prashant.

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

I've never heard of such thing. There are
only two proprietry backup products on
HPUX that will give information how many
times a tape has been used. The first is
'OmniBack', as long as the tape has not been
re-initialised, and the second is 'fbackup'
again as long as it has not been overwritten
by using a different tool. Only OmniBack will
not allow a tape overwrite be default.

HTH
-Michael

[Printaporn_1]

I don't think that diagnostic tool (xstm,mstm,cstm) can report How many time that tape has been overwrite ?
May be just mis understanding of number of test loop.
Without backup tools that can trace this info.
Noway to know , we have to record in paper.

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

This can't be done through software for the simple reason that this information is not stored on tape. Fbackup stores this information on tape, but this area is from the BOT onwards, not before. In order for this to be possible, this information needs to be stored before the BOT (Beginning Of Tape), where very important information is usually stored. Since this is not very important information (sorry!), then it's no use storing it there. There is a method to tell how many times the tape has been used though; the good-old tick-on-paper method. Get some stickers and tick on it whenever you make a backup. We do this for the cleaning tape media after all...

HTH,
Vince

[Volker Borowski]

May be I am completely wrong, but....

... for DDS : Yes there is !

Unfortunately, I do not know how.
I had a HP technican here some years ago, who said the same thing about a DDS/1.

I tried to search the web today, but I was not so lucky, may someone else is more. I found this:

http://www.compaq.com/products/storageworks/dat8cassette2040/qa.html
Where esp. the following section is interesting:
>>>>>>>>>>
Q: How many times can I re-use a tape?
A: The tape drive logs how many times the tape has been used during the eject process. Your application should read this count from the tape log and refuse to accept the tape after 99 uses. We recommend that regularly used tapes should be replaced annually as a precaution.
>>>>>>>>>
... but how to read that tapelog ?

And more interesting this one, as it is referncing HP tapes:

http://www.datman.com/tbul/dmtb_035.htm

Where it is explained, that after a "load" of a DDS tape, the tape is positioned some step "ahead" a special header. But I was never able to verify those two statements.

At least, I am sure, there is a tape section on the DDS media, that can not be accessed by application. That would explain, why this information is only readable from the tapelog, because the tape itself has only access to this information, when the tape is ejected.

I have to admit, I never thought about it, but if someone finds out how to read the tapelog, please let us know.

Volker

[Volker Borowski]

... needlesly to say that information is destroyed, if the tape is degaussed.

But at least the fbackup, dd, tar ... stuff should be covered.

V.

[Karsten Löperick]

Hi Radim,

take a look at the following file:
/etc/sam/br/fbackup_config
Here you will find the "Tape Using Counter"

Hope that was the Info you need

Greetings
Karsten

[Steven Gillard_2]

Yes this information is available to the diags ([cmx]stm) via the SCSI tape expert tool. The bad news is you have to have the HP-only license to run it, which is a password that gets entered in via System->License->Install HP-only.

I don't know where the diags get this information from, but it must be stored somewhere...

Regards,
Steve

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

That is very easy ( with the Charlys unsupported sofware). Only for DDS devices.

Compile attachment.

Under Tape log section see loads entry.

Good luck.

[Darrell Allen]

Hi Carlos,

I need to remind readers to be cautious with unsupported software...

I compiled "Charly's unsupported program" without problem on my K570 running 11.0. When I executed the program it reported to stderr:
fstat : Error 0
I captured stdout to file, created a tar file on the tape, and ran Charly's program again. The output changed but I don't know which values mean what. Loads was 0 both times.

Most importantly, Charley's program corrupted the info on my tape. Tar tvf would fail with:
Tar: tape read error

Good thing I ran it on a test system against a test tape.

Darrell