We have been using the STK-9840 drives attached to our mainframe since
February of this year.  Because of the number of issues that we had with
them, I believe/hope we were an early customer site.  Early into their
implementation here, we've had to replace a couple of drives, upgrade the
microcode a number of times and encountered a few "bad spots" on the
cartridges.  We do have two drives attached to an AIX server for ADSM
backups, and I heard that they were down for a day or two.  So far we
haven't lost any ADSM data.

Other than that, they're great!

Since I'm not the primary ADSM administrator, I don't have any time analysis
to provide you.  However, I have heard that we are storing up to 80
gigabytes per cartridge.

I would strongly suggest to the mainframe folks using DFSMShsm that you
review your parms, particularly those for large tapes, and carefully chose
what data you put onto these cartridges.  If there is anyone using DFSMShsm
on these drives, I would be very interested in hearing from you.

Good luck!

Ann Ehland
ehland.aj AT mellon DOT com