I suggest installing mt from the mt-st package. Its output is much more user-friendly.
# mt status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 512 bytes. Density code 0x58 (no translation).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (41000000):
BOT ONLINE
BOT meaning beginning-of-tape. A little more readable than a bitmask.
This is a terrible way to test. LTO drives have built-in compression which will massively skew the numbers with something incredibly compressible like /dev/zero. Instead, you can use /dev/urandom if it’s fast enough on your system, or use openssl:
You should always use the /dev/nst0 device, unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise.
Instead of dd, use mbuffer, as discussed recently in this lengthy thread:
Not really. tar has the -M or --multi-volume option, and mbuffer has the -A option to point to an autoloader command, and the autoloader can be a prompt on the screen or an e-mail telling you it’s time to swap tapes in your drive, if you don’t have a robot.
You’ve got a decent introduction there, but things start getting interesting with multi-tape archives and incremental / differential backups.