Chapter 16: Working With Cartridges and Barcodes
Using Cleaning Cartridges
696 Quantum Scalar i6000 User’s Guide
Using Cleaning Cartridges
Most tape drives require occasional cleaning. A cleaning cartridge cleans
accumulated debris from the tape drive and the read/write head.
Caution: You must use a separate cleaning cartridge for each
partition in the library.
Backup applications or archive software applications use different
techniques to automate the process of cleaning drives. These tools
specify cleaning cycles based on cycle counts of the drive, drive
requests, or regularly scheduled intervals.
The cleaning process itself requires certain considerations:
• Cleaning tapes must be labeled with a barcode. The preferred
method of labeling a cleaning cartridge is to have CLN or CLNU as
the prefix on the label. Any cartridge detected with a CLN or CLNU
prefix will be considered a universal cleaning cartridge, regardless of
any media identification extension. Cartridges containing a media
identification of C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, and CU will be considered
cleaning cartridges and will be tracked and treated as a universal
cleaning cartridge.
• Insert a cleaning tape just as you do any other data tape. For
example, the most common method is by means of the I/E station
using host application control.
• Cleaning tapes often have limited lives that can last only as long as
20 cycles. The controlling host application manages the number of
uses of a cleaning tape. Errors can occur if a tape is inserted into a
drive when the tape has already been used the maximum number of
times.
• Export a cleaning tape just as you would export any other data tape.
• The concepts of physical and partitions must be considered when
setting up cleaning procedures and methods. In general, cleaning
cartridges must be treated in the same manner as data cartridges.
Any physical cartridge (cleaning or data) can exist in only one
partition. There can be no sharing of cleaning cartridges between
partitions.
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