Cleaning HP Colorado Tape backup

[Karen Miller]

What is the best way to clean my internal back-up system? Can I use q-tips and alcohol?

Thanks

Karen

P.S. This thread has been moved from Disk to  Tape Libraries and Drives. -HP Forum Moderator

[Iain F. Brown]

Sponge-tipped swab in 90% isopropyl alcohol is recomended.

[paul courry]

A cleaning tape is also a good way. Just run the cleaning tape through once in a while to remove all the gunk off the heads. Cleaning tapes are usually available wherever you buy your backup tapes.

[Eric de Lange_2 · Accepted solution]

Karen,

The newer devices like the T4, T4000, Colorado T20 (and even the Colorado 5 and 8 GB I think) are cleaned by a regular data tape when you do a retension on it. Usefull, does not require fiddling with cottontips and ....retensions the tape which actually resolves a lot of i/o errors with the drive as the tape/head contact relies on the physical tape tension. Too loose and the tape looses contact with the head leading backup failures. Too high tape tension leads to snapped tapes although not very common.

best regards,

-Cal.