Tape drive vs. data cartridge

[MaryAnn Ramos]

1) Based on the manual, the HP Colorado tape drive do not require cleaning. Is this information correct?
2)I'm having trouble with back ups using HP Travan 5GB C4429A data cartridge with HP Colorado tape drive. I just bought 5 data cartridges and after the first time of use, it gives errors, such as: "An error occurred while reading the media. The media cannot be read or contains an unknown media format. If the media contains valid data, please verify the device connections or try changing the device settings. The backup device reported an unrecoverable hardware error."

Either the Colorado is faulty or I bought a bad batch of data cartridges. How would I know which is the culprit? Cartridges should be rewritable for up to 100 times, right?

[Rothery Harris]

There is no cleaning cartridge for the HP Travan tape drives. It is possible either media of tape drive are faulty. If you have existing media which works then it is likely your new media is faulty. Please check that they are the correct media for the drive. These drives have been out of production for some time now.