- Make sure the tape drive is clean. The hardware manual that came with your drive should state how, and how often, to clean the drive.
Dirty tape heads can cause read and write errors. New tapes shed more oxide than older tapes, so you should clean your drive more frequently if you use a lot of new tapes.
- Make sure you have enough backup media on hand. The bru utility has an option to check the size of a backup, so you can determine if you have enough media. You can also use such utilities as du(1) and df(1) to determine the size of directories and filesystems, respectively.
Also, use good-quality media. Considering the value of your data, use the best quality media you can afford.
- Run fsck(1M) first on EFS filesystems (if you are backing up an entire filesystem) to make sure you do not create a tape of a damaged filesystem. You must unmount a filesystem before checking it with fsck, so plan your backup schedule accordingly.
This step is not necessary if you are backing up only a few files (for example, with tar).
- The default tape device for any drives you may have is /dev/tape. If you do not use the default device, you must specify a device in your backup command line.
- Label your backups. If you plan to reuse the media, use pencil. Include the date, time, name of the system, the name of the utility, the exact command line used to make the backup (so you'll remember how to extract the files later), and a general indication of the contents. If more than one administrator performs backups at your site, include your name.
- Verify the backup when you are finished. Some utilities (such as dump and bru) provide explicit options to verify a backup. With other programs, you can simply list the contents of the archive--this is usually sufficient to catch errors in the backup.
- Write-protect your media after you make the backup.
- Note the number of times you use each tape. It's sufficient to keep a running tally on the tape label.
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