SYSTEM, METHOD AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCT FOR SYNCHRONIZING DATA WRITTEN TO TAPE INCLUDING WRITING AN INDEX INTO A DATA PARTITION

摘要

Disclosed is a system, method and computer program product for synchronizing data written to tape with improved data recovery. When writing data to tape, an index is kept in memory and updated to reflect change(s) to a file system mounted on tape. After a predetermined amount of data is written to a tape, a device may perform a sync operation, causing the index to be written into a data partition of the tape. If the sync operation is successful, the index in the index partition of the tape can be updated using a copy of the index in the data partition of the tape next time the tape is mounted. If the sync operation is not successful, the device may write the data to a different location on the same or another tape, update the index, and force another sync operation. This process can be repeated.

主权项

1. An apparatus, comprising:
a memory; at least one processor; and stored instructions translatable by the at least one processor to:
when a tape is mounted on a drive, write an index from an index partition of the tape into the memory such that the memory stores an in-memory version of the index;after a predetermined amount of time has passed, after a predetermined condition has been met, or after a predetermined amount of data has been written to the tape, perform a synchronization operation to write the in-memory version of the index to a data partition of the tape such that the data partition of the tape stores a copy of the in-memory version of the index;when the tape is to be unmounted, perform an unmount operation to write the in-memory version of the index from the memory into the index partition of the tape;when the tape is to be mounted again, compare indexes most recently written to the index partition of the tape and to the data partition of the tape; andif the indexes do not match, automatically perform a recovery operation to update the index partition of the tape with the copy of the in-memory version of the index from the data partition of the tape.