Using tar to write files during backups

As part of our backup procedures, we use the UNIX tar command to write files to tape. This works fine, most of the time. But every now and then we get a "tar: write error: I/O error" (that's all it says). For a while this was always happening on the same file (and old copy of init.ora). I removed this file from the system, which seemed to help for a while. But now we are getting the same error again, pretty frequently, on different files each time. We have a series of 14 backup tapes that we cycle through. The errors don't always happen with the same tapes. So it doesn't seem likely that a bad tape is the problem. Does anyone else have any experience with this? I really don't know much about tar. Is there a better way to write files out to tape (i.e. is cpio likely to work better)? Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Mark Greaves Received on Thu May 14 1998 - 11:17:17 CDT