I seem to always have issues when replacing LTO2 drives (3583-L72 library)
that fail and would like to know what folks do out there, to handle it
better than we do.

I currently have two dead/failing LTO2 drives.

When I pull one out and replace it with a spare, TSM wont use it and TSM
complains about the serial # and not being able to find the correct drive.

4/19/2008 9:01:58 AM ANR8963E Unable to find path to match the serial
number defined for drive LTO-DRIVE5 in library IBM3583-2 .

In the past, I have had to shut down all TSM servers and bounce the
lin_taped/IBMtaped process and/or bounce the server to rediscover the SAN
attached devices and reassign the new serial numbered drive and remove the
old one.   If there is a SAN path order shuffle and any drive gets a new
/dev/IBMtapenn, I have to reconfigure the paths for every drive effected
by the "musical chairs" reorg.

Your suggestions on how to better handle this (besides just chucking these
!@#$%^&*() LTO2 drives, which I hope to do within the next 1-2 years)!

All servers are Linux  RH4. The library owning servers are 5.5 lin_tape
drivers at at the latest level for the kernel (2.6.9.55 kernel - 1.10
driver)