Arcserve Tape Backup Labeling Explained

The labels I use for backup tapes are simple to understand.

Tape labels are made up from five unique pieces of information; the most important identifier is the Tape Serial Number.  The serial number is the most significant part of any label.

A typical label looks like this:  D-ASI-Mon 6/23/06 (E838) #200001
The label above is a (D)aily Tape used for (ASI[Appraisal Services, Inc.]) on Monday 6/23/06 and is encoded with the tape ID of (E838), Serial Number #2000001

Sometimes, with tapes having a very small area to write on, I use a label with less info, using only the Day, Date, and Serial Number. 
So the above label could be reduced to : Mon 6/13/06 #200001

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 Arcserve to request which tape should be mounted in the tape drive.