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From: hedrick@topaz.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: UNIX tape backup utilities ( SysAdmin from UniSolutions Assoc.)
Message-ID: <14572@topaz.rutgers.edu>
Date: Wed, 9-Sep-87 11:08:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.14572
Posted: Wed Sep  9 11:08:13 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Sep-87 01:37:25 EDT
References: <153@tijc02.UUCP> <1143@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 6
Keywords: menus security backups
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:4164 comp.unix.questions:3963

Our backup scripts all begin by cat'ing a random binary file to the
tape, cat'ing it back into a temp file, and diff'ing the results.
This should catch any consistent tape drive failures.  So far we
haven't seen any problems that this didn't catch.  One can certainly
imagine intermittent failures that would get by it, but there's a lot
to be said for a test that is cheap and catches most of the problems.