I'm assuming you want to be able to use the tapes as scratch tapes. If so then I'd suggest just loading in the drive and doing a simple tar to the tape - that will overwrite the header information.
Of course if you KNOW that "there is a possibility" legal might NEED these tapes for litigation that is pending YOU could be held legally responsible for doing this by the courts or the plaintiffs you've frustrated. You need to insure whatever action you take is in line with EXISTING retention policy and is NOT being done in light of some legal action that is pending. Personally I wouldn't bother with this at all. If legal comes to you and says you have to save all tapes then you should be saving everything with infinite retention already and tell them how much it costs to keep every backup ever made. Most legal departments do really want you to save everything forever - only for as long as the law requires. Plaintiffs can not compel your organization to provide information that it no longer has but they can compel it to provide information that it does have. The legal argument for "scratch" tapes is that the information that tells you WHERE the old backup is no longer exists so they can't really compel you to re-import old scratch tapes on the off chance one of them contains information they might want. -----Original Message----- From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of rvadde Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 11:46 AM To: VERITAS-BU@mailman.eng.auburn.edu Subject: [Veritas-bu] Making Expired Netbackup Tapes Unreadable Greetings, I am pretty sure that a lot of you who are working for big enterprises are aware of the legal holds and holding even the scratch tapes for the legal purposes. I have a question related to this. There is a possibility that legal might come back and ask to hold all tapes including the scratch tapes because Netbackup has a mechanism to read those tapes and import them. Is there a way we can make Netbackup tapes as unimportable easily with out rewriting the whole tape? Thanks +---------------------------------------------------------------------- |This was sent by rajesh_va...@fanniemae.com via Backup Central. |Forward SPAM to ab...@backupcentral.com. +---------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu ---------------------------------- CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you. ---------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu