Re: Are Tapes Verified During Backup?

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 10:49 AM, Jerry Adams <Jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In this year's audit letter, the auditors said that the tapes that we use for backup are not verified.  We have a 6384 Model 001 (1/4" tape cartridge) on a model 520.

I have been searching both Midrange, the InfoCenter, and Redbooks/Manuals trying to find out if the tapes are verified.  Can't find anything, but thought one of you might know and, hopefully, point me to a URL that I can use in my reply.

I suspect that the tapes are verified simply because the PRTERRLOG report shows temporary and permanent errors.  I print these at the end of each week, and only see a small number of temporary errors (1 or 2 per tape).  Reasonably it seems to me that the system would not know if it had an error unless it was checking (verifying) what it wrote.

Not really, as I'm pretty sure the errors counted are those
encountered during normal read/write operations.

I'm with the others, find out what the mean by verified.

If they want the system to compare what it wrote to the contents of
the tape, like you can with CD/DVD burning softeware and some backup
software on PCs, then I think that's not possible. Especially if you
use Save While Active and go directly to tape.

I suppose it might make sense for IBM to offer a VERIFY parm on the
SAVSAVFDTA and the DUPTAP commands....but it's not there now.

Charles