Ultrium 230 LTO Cleaning frequency

[CA1108138]

What is the recommended frequency to clean LTO drives?

How many cleanings is recommended for a cleaning tape?

/InFocus

[CA843380]

Hi,

> What is the recommended frequency to clean LTO drives?

Only clean the drive when the drive asks for it, this is no recommended cleaning cycle for HP Ultrium drives like DDS.

> How many cleanings is recommended for a cleaning tape?

There are 2 sorts of cleaning cartridge out in customer land. Older Legacy cleaning cartridges that only work for one brand of drive manufacturer and universal cleaning cartridges that work for all drives from every manufacturer.

Below is the expected usage for the HP branded cleaning cartridges, I cannot comment on other drive and media manufacturers cartridges.

Legacy Cleaning Cartridge (LCC-C7979A) will provide at least 15 cleanings in a Gen 1 Ultrium drive and 50 cleanings in a Gen 2 Ultrium drive, unless non-HP LCC which will be rejected without performing any cleaning.

Universal Cleaning Cartridge (UCC-C7978A) will provide 50 cleanings if used only in HP Gen 2 Ultrium drives, but may provide less if used in non-HP Gen 2 drives. Use of UCC in Gen 1 drives will yield at least 15 cleanings per cartridge.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar

[CA1108138]

OK, Thanks for your reply.

Dont clean until the drive ask for it, you say, and how can i automate that?

I'm running win2k+Netbackup+MSL5060

[CA843380]

Hi,

Ok I see you are using a library. I will let one of the library folks answer you question regarding automating cleaning cycles.

I do know on our ESL libraries that if a cleaning cartridge has been properly barcoded and loaded into the library, then the library will automatically use this to clean any drives that request cleaning. I do not know whether this applies to the MSL range though, I will check. Do you have your maunals handy? I would have thought this would have been covered in there?

In general terms the drive will inform the backup application that cleaning is required. If the drive is in a library then is will also inform the library it needs cleaning. The backup application should then pass this message onto the user. Whether the library uses the info received by the drive to activate a cleaning cycle is dependent on the particular library concerned. The drive will also turn on its "cleaning request" led on the front panel, but in your case with an MSL library that is not useful.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar

[CA1108138]

Thanks,

actually I found the documentation on the MSL Series library, and there is also a description on how to set this up.

Case closed

Thanks
/InFocus

[Kusuma]

Hi Fredrik,

The forum encourages authors to assign points to those who have pitched in to solve their technical problems.

To learn more about how to assign points, check out the following link:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#28

Good luck and enjoy foruming!

Thanks,
Kusuma