Scenario: Reclaiming media

This scenario describes how to copy active data from old tapes to new tapes. This process is called reclaiming media.

Note: Reclaim is not supported for optical volumes.

Periodically, Sharon retrieves a special set of tapes from the vault. These tapes contain some of their business records that need to be kept for several years. She decides to run reclaim to copy only the active data to new tape volumes. This saves the latest data that has not expired on the tape volumes to the new volumes and then they are sent back to the vault.

To figure out the volumes to reclaim, Sharon does the following:

In System i® Navigator, expand Backup, Recovery, and Media Services > Media.
Right-click Volumes and select Customize this View -> Include.
On the Volumes - Include window, select Active for the Status field and click OK.
Right-click a tape volume that you want more information about and select Open.
On the Save History - Include window, click OK to view all the saved items within the volume.
On the Save History window, select List actions -> Columns and sorts and add File sequence to the columns to be displayed.
Look at the tape volume information and determine which volumes should be reclaimed. Look for large gaps in the sequence numbers that indicate expired data. (For example, 1 ..... 10 .... 35 ......100 might be a good candidate. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7... might not.)
Right-click Volumes and select Reclaim to go through the Reclaim wizard and reclaim the media.