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unload LTO-4 tape after backup jobs have finished?

 
RalfG
Frequent Advisor

unload LTO-4 tape after backup jobs have finished?

Hi,

we had lots of trouble with LTO-4 tapes lately (not HP tapes, but HP drives).

We got this reply after sending the tapes back to the manufacturer:

----
When we checked the tape surface at the position, which the backup failure occurred, we found tape damage at lower edge with cartridges No.1 through 14. When there is damage on lower tape edge, backup failure at the half of the total capacity could be occurred. There is no damage on edge for cartridge No.15.
----


Now our retailer asked if we leave the tapes in the drive after the jobs finish. The drive's head could damage the tape in this position...

First: the tapes we sent in were mostly only written once, so this couldn't be the cause for the problem.

But I'd like to know if it's true that tapes should be unloaded from the drive? We exchange tapes that are not used regularly, but we don't unload each tape after the daily jobs.
2 REPLIES 2
Vincent Farrugia
Honored Contributor

Re: unload LTO-4 tape after backup jobs have finished?

Hello Ralf,

From experience, whether you remove the tapes or not does not affect the lifetime of the tapes much. Actually, in your case, if you are using the tapes regularly, leaving the tape inside could actually be beneficial to the tape because the tape would not have to be rewound, removed, and put in and loaded again.

Having said that, do you make backups of 1 week on the same tape? It would be better if you have different tapes for different days.

HTH,
Vince
Tape Drives RULE!!!
RalfG
Frequent Advisor

Re: unload LTO-4 tape after backup jobs have finished?

Hi,

> From experience, whether you remove the
> tapes or not does not affect the lifetime
> of the tapes much. Actually, in your case,
> if you are using the tapes regularly,
> leaving the tape inside could actually be
> beneficial to the tape because the tape
> would not have to be rewound, removed, and
> put in and loaded again.


that's what the documentation of our backup software says too.

Ralf
> Having said that, do you make backups of 1
> week on the same tape? It would be better
> if you have different tapes for different
> days.


We have different pools (daily, weekly, monthly). Most of the daily incr. backups go to disk. The weekly differentials to tapes, these tapes are written until they are full or max. 4 weeks (not optimal...). The monthly full backups are always different backup sets.