Common Command Options › Setting Expiration Dates for Tapes

Setting Expiration Dates for Tapes

When you create a tape, CA VM:Tape will use the default set by your system administrator to determine when to expire the tape unless you use one of the options described below to specify when the tape is to expire.

When a tape expires, it becomes eligible to be scratched. When the SCRATCH command is next run, the tape becomes a scratch tape and is available for reuse.

Important! Unless your site automatically demagnetizes tapes when it runs the SCRATCH command, the next user to get the tape will have access to all the data on it. You may want to erase all the sensitive data on a tape when it is about to expire; if the system administrator has set up CA VM:Tape USEREXIT5, you can use that user exit to erase tapes.