Deleting individual files from tapes?

[whitenoiz]

I have searched EVERYWHERE for an answer to this one and have had no luck yet... I hope someone here can help me!

I have a client that signed a confidentiality agreement that basically means that now the contract is finished, they have to delete all information about the contract, including from backups.

In an ideal world I would simply go through the tapes and delete the relevant files from them, but as they do not use a 'file system' as such, I cannot find a way to do this. I don't expect this to be possible but it is a very interesting request and so I would really like to know if it is possible or not.

Does anyone know if this is possible, without messing up the rest of the data on the tape? Ideally we don't want to have to wipe 6 months worth of tapes!!!!

Thanks, Steve.

[Ken_Putnam]

Can't do it

Tape is sequential access, meaning it's all or nothing.  

Besides, I can't believe that your legal department  let you get rooked into a contract like that

Sure the "Confidential Contract" is over, but if you remove all mention of it from your records, if a dispute ever arises, you've automatically lost, since you have no documentation to backup your claim

I guess you could conceivably do a full restore, delete, then backup again, but you probably don't have the disk space to do that , even if your boss asks, right

[whitenoiz]

Yep, I thought as much. On the contract side of things I think this may be quite common for this particular company but I will definately advise that in the future they remove any clauses replating to data backed up to tape.

And no... despite the 2 terabyte storage arrays, there is DEFINATELY NOT ENOUGH DISK SPACE to go through and re-backup 6 months worth of data! ;) What a nightmare that would be!!

Steve.