X-no-Archive:yes
My reaction, after feeling all the blood drain out of my head (we use DDS),
was to wonder if using SLTCOPY to copy the tapes from the other drive back
to the original, would also fail under these circumstances? Or, might
creating a test IMAGE database (I like the .Z.Z idea) of a large number of
small / empty datasets, which could be restored daily? How about a restore
of a quasi-random fileset to $NULL? That would read the tape, wouldn't it?

Losing data is not an option! Can we get an SR for PS to notice drive
problems?