I just wonder do you really use tape drive for these backups – it’s usually quite expensive sollution for a Linux box…

If, in contrary, you are using tar to make a backup on a second harddisk, or over network, I’d suggest to consider software RAID or switching to rsync (if you need dayly backups).

I’ll not comment RAID, just few words about rsync – (1) it replaces only files, changed since last backup, and (2) it complains if a file sheduled for synchronisation disapeares or changes (sure), but continues processing other files, so you end up with a decent backup of the system.

BR,

Petko