Hi, Bill.
Well, you could use 30 tapes (grin). A bit expensive, wot?
My environment involves weekly and month-end processing,
like many operations, so I want to ensure I have good
backups at end of week and end of month.
The cycle uses 10 tapes:
MTWTF - one for each day of the week.
However there are 4 Friday tapes, and when
Friday comes the oldest one is used. Then it gets
taken off-site and becomes a weekly tape.
There are 3 other weekly tapes, the oldest one
gets brought back for use the following Friday.
The first Friday tape of each month becomes a
monthly tape, of which there are two.
Thus there are 10 tapes:
MTWTF - dailys
WWW - weeklies
MM - monthlies.
That way I have daily backups for the last week,
weeklies for the last month and monthlies for
the last 2 months.
At least 3 times in the last couple of years I have
gone back to the oldest monthly to recover something
that didn't get noticed until month-end.
BTW I also rotate the MTWT dailies with weeklies on
a non-specific schedule to ensure all tapes get
similar usage.
Tapes more than 3 years old get replaced.
Complicated but it works for me.
Brgds
Jock