A Regular Erase can take a few hours to complete.There are two methods for erasing tapes: Quick Erase and Regular Erase. A Quick Erase takes much less time than a regular erase because it only overwrites the current tape label, it doesn't remove all the contents of the tape. Quick Erase is useful if you want to re-use SCO ARCserve/Open tapes, but you don't have time to wait for a full tape erase. Also, if you want Auto Pilot to use a tape, do a quick erase on it.
A Regular Erase can take a few hours to complete.
A Regular Erase completely removes all data from a tape. It takes much longer than a Quick Erase, but the tape is considered blank. For security reasons, if you want to make sure that the data on a tape is gone completely, use Regular Erase.
Use this option with care! Once you perform an Erase on a tape, any data contained on it is lost permanently.
To erase a tape:
See ``Accessing the Changer Device Management options'', which details the steps to get you here.
Or, click the Erase Tapes icon.
The following dialog box displays:
If the slots that are displayed are not the ones that have the tape(s) to be erased, select a different tape device group.
If your changer has only one tape drive, then you will not be able to select any other group, and all slots in the changer will be shown.
Highlight the desired tape.
The default for erase mode is Quick Erase, which destroys the tape label, allowing you to write over the existing data on the tape. If you select Regular Erase mode, all of the existing data is erased. This process may take a few hours to complete.
SCO ARCserve/Open Changer Device Manager allows you to erase more than one tape at a time in the same group. Simply go back to step 4 and select the next tape you want to erase, and select the appropriate erase mode.