AIX Tip of the Week

AIX Tip of the Week: Copying Tapes with the AIX tcopy Command

Audience: AIX Administrators and End Users

Date: May 21, 1999

It is often necessary to duplicate tapes for off-site storage of critical data, for creating distribution tapes, or for coping a tape to a different media type. The AIX command for duplicating tapes is the tcopy command. The tcopy command can handle different source and destination tape media, as well as different block sizes. With only a source tape specified, the tcopy command prints information about the block size, tape capacity, and number of records.