For the last few years at work, I've been doing a project transferring about a thousand audio DATs covering 1989 to 1999.
For 10 year old DATs, you have much less chance of problems. Yes, FF and rewind each tape. Use the digital output and copy digitally, using the same sample rate and making sure to clock from the DAT player. Players seem to do less error correction out of the digital output than the analog out. I prefer to see the problem areas and fix them rather than getting too much correction and masking, but occasionally, I do have to resort to some analog copying. Having access to several players is helpful many times, as alignments and hear wear will vary. Listen to the entire transfer carefully for dropouts. If you get a dropout, you can try cleaning the head and replaying that section, even several times. Sometimes you can get the playback on a troublesome dropout to play back OK, and you can splice it back in.
I am always prepared to clean heads, first a cleaning tape, then to disassemble and use video-chamois sticks.