Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!gkcl!aronb
From: aronb@gkcl.ists.ca (Aron Burns)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: Verifying Tape Writes
Message-ID: <15810@ists.ists.ca>
Date: 3 Dec 90 15:44:08 GMT
References: <528@mermaid.Litle.Com>
Sender: news@ists.ists.ca
Reply-To: aronb@gkcl.UUCP (Aron Burns)
Organization: y
Lines: 26

In article <528@mermaid.Litle.Com> tom@mermaid.litle.com (Tom Hampton) writes:
>We had thought that printing out a catalog of a tape's
>contents prooved that the tape would be restoreable:
>
>cpio -itvB </dev/tape
>
>In practice, we have found that the above commamd completes
[...]
>Any suggestions?

To verify that the media is good, try
dd if=/dev/tape of=/dev/null
and if you see something liek
35000+0 blocks in
35000+0 blocks out
this tells you that the same number of blocks went in as out ( should
always happen ) and that there were no retries (+0). This does not 
verify that the tape info matches the disk info, only that the
media is good.  



Aaron Burns      	     "Nothing I say on the net is binding
aronb@gkcl.ists.ca         to our corporation"
Toronto, Ontario         "Life is a forge, and the purest metal
(416)392-4310             comes from the hottest fire"