Logging tape backups

How many transactions a month do you generate?

I think that about the only thing that you gain with "real" inventory management software is perhaps easier label printing abilities. You still need to enter all of the data manually, right?

every week we send off 28 tape drives which have barcodes attached. that puts us at about ~120 drives leaving the facility and about the same amount coming in each month. right now we are entering the data manually. I was curious to see if anyone had a better solution.

usb barcode reader? or create an excel front sheet where you tell it whats going on in a more friendly way, and then use macros to convert that to your logging format, as much information can then be entered once.

There are a whole world of commercial options which will allow you to use the barcodes on the tapes to check tapes in/out of the local store. Some of these tie back into the backup logs themselves so you can search $file $date and get the last known backup date, time and tape ID's. Problem is they are not budget options.

The other way to do it is simplify the problem. If all you're interested in is knowing the physical location of a tape then any asset management solution that supports barcodes should work. You might even find that a phone app for managing CD collections works for you, just define a custom album for each tape barcode you have. Including info such as tape purchase date can then be used for replacement schedules and the like.

13th, the USB barcode reader is great for reading labels (I have one), but OP will still need to enter the data manually.

unless there is also a sheet of barcodes, for each backup type, and checking in and out. would also reduce input errors, typos etc.