MSL2024 inventory issue

[Digex]

WHenever we remove the left magazine and place the it with a full set of new tapes it moves 2 or 3 of the tapes over to the empty right magazine. Why is this happening?

[TapeDrive Killer]

Havent seen this before...

What is the Library Behavior ? It should be Random. Also what Library firmware do you have ?

Pablo Alvarado Siles
Tape Storage DPX

[Digex]

Library set to Automatic.

Firmware is 3.70. I know 4.0 is out but does not fix anything we need.

[GustavoT]

Are you getting any errors at all in the OCP? What happens if you change the behavior to Random?

[gregersenj]

I guess:

You have got mail slots enabled, and when you fill it, you also fill the mail slots.
And those 3 or 2 tapes will be moved.

Cheers
/jag

[Digex]

We have only 1 mail slot and 1 cleaning slot. We place the tapes in slots 2-10 to inventory on shelf 1 and it moves it to shelf 2. Should I just disable shelf 2 altogether?

[gregersenj]

Well. Disabling the right magazine, will prevent it from tapes to the left mag. to the right mag. But don't you want to use the right mag.?

I'm just guessing in this case!
I think if you don't put tapes into the 3 front bins (Slots), then i think it won't move them.

I wouldn't reserve a slot for cleaning. LTO (and SDLT) is designed never to be cleaned.
If the lib. is placed in a dirty enviroment, then cleaning may be needed.

[Digex]

This is still occuring. We set the tape option to Random but when we do a inventory it shows blank tapes in slots 5,6,and 7. But when I relook after the inventory the tapes are moved to 22,21,and 20. Why the heck is it doing that. And yes do you need a cleaning tape for all tape drives that are magnetic. It cleans up the buildup of magnetic particles caused by the tape media.

[TapeDrive Killer]

Try a firmware upgrade

Pablo Alvarado Siles

[gregersenj]

Sorry, I don't got any better ideas.

I will suggest to call HP support.

It's not, that i want to argue a lot over the cleaning.
For DAT and AIT, you need to clean regualary.
For LTO and SDLT, you don't. It's designed for a minimum cleaning, and it's self cleaning.
Actually, when SDLT was launched, cleaning tapes wasn't available. The claening tape was released a full year later.
Only clean if drive ask for it, or if you got read/write problemes. You must beware, that cleaning tapes wear the heads, much higer.

Cheers
/jag