Arcserve Tape Backup Labeling Explained

The type of backup I use is called: Father, Grandfather, Son. 

The Tape labels used are made up from four unique pieces of information; the most common identifier is a Tape's #Serial Number.  The serial number almost never changes.

A typical label looks like the following:  D-ASI-Mon 6/23/06 (E838) #200001

In the label above:

D- signifies this is a Daily Tape.  Tape labels always start with either a D, W, or M, indicating a Daily, Weekly, or Monthly Tape.
(ASI-) is an abreviation for the company name[Appraisal Services, Inc.]
(MON) indicates the day of the week the tape was last formatted (Monday). 
(6/23/06), is the date the tape was last formatted.
(E838), is an encoded tape ID.  It changes every time a tape is reused.  The number is in Hexidecimal format.
#2000001, is the tapes Serial Number, which almost never changes throughout a tapes life.

Again, here are the parts of a tape label and what they represent.

Backup Type:  (A) or (D) identifies Daily Backup Tapes, (W) signifies Weekly Tapes, and (M) signifies Monthly Backup Tapes.

Client ID:  Unique 3 letter code I use to identify the client.   This is only important if I store your off-site bakcup tapes; I need to know which client a tape belongs to.

Date:  Day of the week and the date the backup job ran.

Tape ID:  Used internally by the backup software database system.  Used only when restoring files from tape.

Tape Serial Number: Used by the Arcserve software to request which tape should be mounted in the tape drive.