Using Your Digital Data Storage (DDS) Tape Drive

DDS Tape Drive and Data Cassette Descriptions

Media Wear (Caution) Hewlett-Packard DDS drives continually monitor the number of errors they have to correct when reading and writing to a tape to determine tape wear and tape head cleanliness. If excessive tape wear or dirty tape heads are suspected, the drive warns you by displaying the Media Wear (Caution) signal on the LED indicators.

If the LED indicators on your DDS-format drive display the Media Wear (Caution) condition, follow this procedure:

1Check the system console for any tape error messages. A hard error during a read or write operation may have occurred.

2Clean the heads with a cleaning cassette (HP92283K) as described in the “Clean- ing the Tape Heads” section, later in this chapter.

3Repeat the operation you performed when the Media Wear (Caution) signal dis- played. If the Media Wear (Caution) signal still displays, then the data cassette should be replaced.

4If you are performing a backup from disk to tape, discard the data cassette and back up your files using a new data cassette.

5If you are performing a restore from tape to disk, complete the restore, back up the files to a new data cassette, then discard the data cassette

Data Cassettes

Media Life

HP DDS data cassettes are currently specified to 2000 passes over any part of the tape under optimal environmental conditions (50% relative humidity, 22 degrees C). During a tape operation, any one area of the tape may have multiple passes over the heads. This translates into approximately 200 to 300 backups or restores.

Under certain conditions, the life of your data cassette is less. Replace your data cassettes after 100 backups or restores if your operating conditions meet any of the following criteria:

•The relative humidity in your operating environment is consistently less than 50%.

•You know that the backup software you are using makes multiple passes over sec-

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