Preventing Tape Drive Errors - HP 1850R - ProLiant - 128 MB RAM Troubleshooting Manual

Preventing Tape Drive Errors

Often tape drive problems are caused by defective or substandard media. The
following are recommended cleaning procedures:
•
Clean the media every eight hours. This is much more frequent than the
manufacturer's recommendation of "once every 25 hours," but this practice
reduces the number of device failures. Cleaning frequently is especially
important for new media, which requires more frequent cleaning than media that
has been used for five or more backups.
•
Clean the media four times after a failure occurs.
•
If you receive a head clog error (and you are using the latest firmware and
cleaning every eight hours), record that a failure occurred on the label of the
cartridge. Then, replace any cartridges that fail more than three out of five times.
HP Servers Troubleshooting Guide
Error Prevention
6-13