John, In addition to what others have indicated, I wanted to double check what TYPE of tape it is and if it is in a ROBOTIC or VIRTUAL Library of some type. If it is a physical tape NOT inside a robotic device; then changing the status in TLMS is fine and will protect the volume. If it is a physical volume INSIDE a robotic device I would also recommend changing the status from SCRATCH to ACTIVE within the robotic database. If it is mounted for output processing while inside the robotic device, TLMS will stop it from being over-written. However, if it is mounted for output processing when TLMS is not active for some reason - it might be over-written.
Lastly (and most important) if it is Virtual-Volume it MIGHT already be too late. We have had quite a few calls recently where clients accidently scratched a virtual-volume; un-scratched it within CA-1 or TLMS; and then couldn't understand why their attempts to READ the volume failed. Even with an IBM VTS box, depending on your setup parameters the data of the virtual-volume can be gone within hours of being marked scratch. So, regardless of the type of virtual-tape-system you must un-scratch the virtual-volume as soon as possible and then test (run an IEBGENER or IDCAMS-PRINT or Tapemap) to see if the data is still there. And of course, you will have to re-catalog as the scratch process most likely caused the file to become un-cataloged as well. Russell Witt TLMS L2 Support Manager -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Dawes Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 10:35 AM To: [email protected] Subject: TLMS - CHANGING THE STATUS OF A TAPE G'Day, I am trying to change the status of a tape which went scratch. I am not very familiar with TLMS. Would anybody have a utility to do this? What I am trying to do is to change the status from SCRATCH to ACTIVE or LIVE because we want to keep the tape for auditing purposes (yes, the auditiors are breathing down my back). Thanks in advance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
