Hello James

All I know is that I degaussed three yesterday for the first time but when I
went to bplabel the first one, it came back with an I/O error.   I then tpreq it
and mt erase it but got the same I/O error.   I repeated several times over an
hour and then broke for lunch in frustration.   When I came back, I repeated the
mt erase and it worked fine, after which I repeated the bplabel and that worked
fine.   I proceeded to do the other two tapes and there was no problem with
those as well.

A new twist though is that today I degaussed one tape, again it gave I/O errors
when I tried to bplabel it as well as mt erase so I left it again over lunch
after which it mt erase just fine but would not bplabel.   I then tried another
mt erase and it's back to the I/O error problem again.   I've been at this tape
all afternoon, different drives etc.   Tomorrow, if I still can't get it
labelled, I'll degauss it again and see what happens, could be the luck of the
draw as to the effect on that memory chip.   At this rate, it may be degauss the
tape and dispose of them.

What I know of the tapes here is that they are from Sony and hold between 50 and
70GB on average according to Netbackup.   Don't you just hate coming onto a site
with little or no docs...

Regards,
John I Wang
Sr. Systems Engineer
Steverson Information Professionals

---
Enron Broadband Services
Enron Building 1472c
ph (713) 345-4291
fax (713) 646-8063


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|        |          jfielden@exci|
|        |          tecorp.com   |
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|        |          11/15/00     |
|        |          04:55 PM     |
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  >-------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |                                                                   |
  |       To:     John Wang/Contractor/Enron Communications@Enron     |
  |       Communications                                              |
  |       cc:     jmeyer AT ptc DOT com, veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT 
edu   |
  |       Subject:     Re: [Veritas-bu] To ensure overwrites          |
  >-------------------------------------------------------------------|



On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 03:53:47PM -0600, John_Wang AT enron DOT net spake unto 
the
multitudes:
>      - Degaussing an AIT tape requires about two to three hours of wait time
> before the tape is usable (chip scrambled etc.)

Are you sure about that? Our 'degauss' situation is for the same reason - mail.
The tapes we are degaussing are DTF-2, and there is no lag due to the chip on
them...

--
"Any man page that includes the words "USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. BEWARE OF DOG.
SLIPPERY WHEN WET" means trouble" - Michael Lucas
Joshua Fielden, Senior Systems Administrator and Backups Team Lead
eXcite@Home, Inc. jfielden AT excitecorp DOT com 650-556-3316
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