Old LTO4 tapes

[brian-may]

Hello,

How long do LTO tapes last? When should we replace them? What are the potential problems if we don't?

We purchased our LTO4 tapes late 2007, and have been wondering if we need to consider replacing them.

Some people here hold the opinion that TSM will keep retrying if there is a error until the operation succeeds. They say there should be a record somewhere of recent errors encountered by the drive. If so, where?

Personally, my understanding is that TSM will abort immediately on the first error without retrying and mark both the tape and the drive offline requiring manual. Would be nice to be able to get some official information here, putting this argument to an end.

Thanks

[opermty]

The recomendation is 2 years, depends of what frecuently are use the medias and the conditions of the drives

regards

[moon-buddy]

Some people here hold the opinion that TSM will keep retrying if there is a error until the operation succeeds. They say there should be a record somewhere of recent errors encountered by the drive. If so, where?

Personally, my understanding is that TSM will abort immediately on the first error without retrying and mark both the tape and the drive offline requiring manual. Would be nice to be able to get some official information here, putting this argument to an end.

Thanks

If you do 'q volume <tape_volume_number> f=d' you will see the number of read and write errors - the more you have the worst is your tape and should be discarded. 2 years? That seems short IF the tapes are handled well, drives cleaned always and kept at the right temperature and humidity.

The tape drives should be cleaned always and logs how many bad write and read attempts it did - see your tape drive and tape library user guide.