[clug] Can I re-record just the first record of a tape?

[Michael.James at csiro.au]

I want to record my tape backups
 with an index file first containing:
	date of backup
	scope of backup
	sfdisk -d		(partition table)
	fstab
	df
	and an index of all the records on the tape.

That way I can untar the first record
 and have a file telling me what's on that tape,
 all the meta-info,
 how many records to fsf past to get the one I want etc.

If I was feeling very fancy
 it might actually be a shell-script that will re-build the machine.

Trouble is, on a multi-volume sets of tapes,
 I won't know how it split till after.

Can I reliably come back and re-record the logfile after,
 without messing up the inter-record gap
 and zapping the following records?

Anyone with any experience with this?
TIA,
michaelj

-- 
Michael James				michael.james at csiro.au
System Administrator			voice:	02 6246 5040
CSIRO Bioinformatics Facility	fax:		02 6246 5166