[Nottingham] Tape Backup failure

[Robert Postill]

David,
Thought #2, have you hooked up a second drive (I know, these things 
don't grow on trees :) and given it a shot with that script (changing 
the dev paths obviously).  Finally, if the drive is external have you 
tried the drive on another machine?  No one likes to say it but DAT 
drives fail a *lot* more often than DLT or LTO (if you have you some 
money next budget go spring for an LTO, the IBM units are rumored to 
have better reliability than IBM's own much more expensive 3592 units) 
so don't be surprised if the tape hardware is shot.
Regards.
Robert.