to clean a storage drive tape

[Juquin_3]

Hi ,

my question is : How to clean a storage drive tape (HP DLT 4000 2/48) ? Is there a specific location to put the cartridge? What is the action to do ?

thanks a lot ,

[David Ruska]

The most common way to do setup a library for cleaning is to use a special barcode range (e.g. CLNxxxx), and then assign it in your backup software as a cleaning tape. The backup software will managage use of the cleaning tape (e.g. clean the drive when it requests it).

With this method, you put the cleaning tape in a normal slot.

On some of the older libraries (the 2/48 is one of them), you can also put a cleaning tape in a special "reserved" slot (see page 4-15 of this the users manual: http://h200006.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/lpg28403/lpg28403.pdf). Then you can use the front panel "cleaning" functions to clean an individual drive (or all drives) without need to load a cleaning tape through the mail slot.

The preference is to setup the backup software to manage cleaning.