David,

look for AUDIT VOLUME, RESTORE VOLUME and UPDATE VOLUME ACCESS=DESTROYED
commands. They can help you when the bad things already happened.
If you want to prevent or predict tape failure you can use private volumes
instead of scratch (yes, I know it's harder to maintain).
For private volumes there is useful info in Q VOL F=D output - "Write Pass
Number: ". And you can estimate how many times this particular cartridge
was used.
You have same data for scratch volumes BUT when the volume becomes empty
and returns to scratch status the counter is reset to 0 !!! So you cannot
rely on it.

Greetings
Zlatko Krastev
IT Consultant


Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
To:     ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
cc:

Subject:        Bad tape

        Is there a procedure to replace the data on a tape that has went
bad? We use 3590 tapes on our AS/400 side and they are known to break the
tape or just become unusable for some reason.
        We haven't had a bad tape on the PC side yet. We use a library that
has the tapepool tapes in it and have our copypool tapes in the vault. I
know it will happen one day and I need some way to replace the data that
was
on the unusable tape either from the library or from the vault.
        Server is a WinNT4 running 4.1.3.
        Thanks...

David Tyree
Microcomputer Specialist
South Georgia Medical Center
229.333.1155

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