Tape dump devices are tape drives supported by Windows NT. To dump to a tape, the tape dump device must be located on the computer on which SQL Server is running.
You can add multiple dumps to a single tape, adding each dump to the tape after the last dump. Or, you can overwrite the existing information on a tape with the new dump.
Information about a tape dump is recorded on the tape label. This information includes up to 17 characters of the database name, the time and date of the dump, and the type of dump (database or log). This is called volume and header information and can be viewed using SQL Enterprise Manager or the LOAD HEADERONLY statement. For information, see Viewing Volume and Header Information, later in this chapter.
For information about installing a tape drive, see the documentation for Microsoft Windows NT. For more information about setting up your tape dump device, see Chapter 5, Managing Devices. Also see the Microsoft SQL Server Transact-SQL Reference.