>I guess I'm wondering if anyone has actually experienced a file corruption or any other kind of disaster while using PACK. Since a client should back up their data files on a frequent basis, data should be easily restored if a disaster really did occur. I always advise clients to perform backups before any kind of maintenance is performed.

I've heard the warnings for years, but still use PACK regularly without ever experiencing any trouble. But, you can read in Hacker's Guide the warnings for yourself, perhaps, with the alternative as suggested by others.

My failsafe is that I do tape backups of the data, as you say, prior to the PACKs & recreation of INDEXES (which I also usually do at the same time), like

DELETE TAG ALL
PACK
INDEX ON...