Bit of help with tape back ups

[undercover]

Using Suse and tar to disk.

 

On the server i have a folder that contains the last 10 days data in /backups/year/month/ then it has the zip files for each day in there.

 

If i write these to tape, on the tape it creates /backups/year/month/ list of files.

After i put the tape in the follow week with out rewinding what will happen

as will it create a new /backups/year/month list of files? so there will be 2 /backups/year/month on there with reoccuring dates so how would i go about restoring the correct files.

 

Or would it be better just to keep 5 days data on the server so that theres no duplication of data on the same tape. or should i rewind the tape at the start of each back up?

 

TIA

[apaton]

Using Suse and tar to disk.

 

Or would it be better just to keep 5 days data on the server so that theres no duplication of data on the same tape. or should i rewind the tape at the start of each back up?

 

TIA

 

 

Every modern tape drive I've used always rewinds the tape on eject (DLT/LTO). You would manually have to move the tape into the right position with the "mt fsf 1 /dev/"

 

How you backing upto tape with tar / cpio ? Check this blog for more info - Linux Tape Backup With mt And tar Command Howto