Nate,

If your library is not checking the suffix for tape density, the
barcode label doesn't really matter.  It should figure out what
density the tape is when it looks at the tape and will write
accordingly.  I did this at one point because our gen 3 tapes labels
came in with "L2" on the end.  We told the library not to look at the
suffix and it writes 700-800 gig per tape.  We kept the tapes as type
hcart which is what the others were set for.  It seems to have worked
fine.

By setting ours up this way it would try to write to either a gen2 or
a gen3 tapes depending on the allocation order.  As we wanted to get
rid of the older tapes, we just pulled all the old tapes from the
library and put them in if there was a restore request.  We didn't
change pools or media types and everything went along fine.  Once the
tapes expired we destroyed them.

We have only set up 3 barcode rules so we haven't had much of an issue
with labels.  It takes anything that is not a cleaning tape or has an
unreadable label and puts it in the scratch pool when they are first
scanned.  Some people have very complex barcode schemes due to their
environment.  I can see where things could get tricky if you have a
lot of rules for off-site tape, different retention periods, etc.

Jeff

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 3:21 PM, Nate Sanders <sandersn AT dmotorworks DOT com> 
wrote:
> I've heard mixed reports from people varying from "it works, but will
> result in bad things" to "it will not work, period" when it comes to
> mixing labels on media types. The issue we face right now is we need to
> order more tape, and would rather not order LTO3 when it will just be
> pitched anyways, but we don't have LTO4 labels yet. We may end up trying
> to print out own if we have to.
>
>
> Jeff Cleverley wrote:
>> Nate,
>>
>> Generally people don't like mixing media levels within a pool but it
>> can be done within the read/write compatibility between generations.
>> You may need to keep an eye on your barcode labels and your tape
>> library.  Most libraries allow the barcode scanner to use the last 2
>> charactors of the label such as "L4" to specify the density of the
>> tapes.  If this is set and you use the gen3 labels ending in "L3" it
>> will write at the lower density level.
>>
>> I don't believe you can mix media types in a pool such as LTO and QIC.
>> That may be what you were thinking of.
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Nate Sanders            Digital Motorworks
> System Administrator      (512) 692 - 1038
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-- 
Jeff Cleverley
Unix Systems Administrator
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Fort Collins, Colorado 80525
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