LTO-5 Tape Drive as backup drive

[dietmar]

What could i do to leave 2 or 3 backups on the tape before deleting the oldest one?

Do not rewind.

 

[tafkaz]

Well, but wouldn't that mean, that the tape will just fill up and stop getting backups as soon as it's full?

Thank you
Sascha

 

[dietmar]

Well, but wouldn't that mean, that the tape will just fill up and stop getting backups as soon as it's full?

Sure. But replace the tape when it gets full (or after a few backups).

 

[udo]

Hi!
Yes i know, but as there's not enough space on my local RAID to store more than one backup simultanously, i was thinking of a possibility to store more than one backup file on the tape.

This being my backup to tape script

#!/bin/bash

TAPE=/dev/st0
echo "Start Time: `date +'%Y-%m-%d %T'`"
mt -f $TAPE defcompression 1
mt -f $TAPE rewind
cd /usr/local/backup/daily/dump/
tar -b 256 -cvf $TAPE ./vzdump*.gz
echo "Start writing Tape:`date +'%Y-%m-%d %T'`."
echo "Stop writing Tape:`date +'%Y-%m-%d %T'`"
mt -f $TAPE eject
echo "Backup finished: `date +'%Y-%m-%d %T'`"

What could i do to leave 2 or 3 backups on the tape before deleting the oldest one?

Thanks
Sascha

Hi,
you can't delete jobs there are on the tape before newer tar-jobs! If you overwrite content on a tape, all data behind that mark are lost.

You can jump to (or after) an specific tar-count and write the next data there (see "mt fsf N" or to the end of writen data "eof") - but it's neccesary to use the norewind-device for that - mean /dev/nst0 instead of /dev/st0.

Udo