Is there a faster way to erase or reformat a Dat tape than the tape erase command? It takes forever to erase a tape in the drive this way and I want to start making daily backups of my system where only one restore will be held per tape so I will be sure the right backup is restored without having to try and forward the tape to the right archive.
I think, since it is a Tape-Device, there is a physical limit of speed, so i guess there is no other option then the tape erase command (may the sun radiation is faster on special days ^^)
I don’t think you need to erase a tape to start writing on it from the begining. Writing even a very small file onto the start of a tape makes it somewhat difficult but not impossible to retrieve anything that was previously written. I would only use erase if security was a problem.