IBM-AUSTRIA - PC-HW-Support    30 Aug 1999

Full Tape Backups

Periodic full tape backups force all data files to be read and copied to tape. This procedure provides two advantages:

•  It provides an archive of all data in case it is  needed to restore from a multiple drive failure or user error that could  cause data loss/corruption.
•  By reading every file on the disk, the backup  process forces the disk and the adapter to discover any sector media  errors and to correct them, greatly decreasing the likelihood of the  rebuild failures described in the previous section. If weekly tape  backups are performed, data scrubbing is still recommended to detect and  correct sector media errors in non-data areas of the drives.

If a sector media error has not been discovered and an array rebuild fails as described previously, a full tape backup can then be performed to minimize data loss. The tape backup saves all files except for the one containing the damaged sector. The drives can then be restored from the configuration disk and synchronized, forcing the remapping of bad sectors. The data can then be restored. The files that were contained on the damaged sector would then have to be restored from a prior backup.

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