> We got a batch of B tapes that we're using with C drives.  Not good, but
> stuff happens.  So, we're going to move from B to C.
>
> 1. Does anything need to change in the drive firmware to use the C tapes?
> My thought is no, that I should just be able to put these C tapes in and
> magic will happen and everything will be hundydory.

You can intermix the use of B and C tapes on C-drives.  The only issue is
that the B-tapes are not as fast as the C-tapes.  Other than speed, there
is no reason to not continue to use your investment in B-tapes.  I have a
mix of about 750 B-tapes and 750 C-tapes.  At $62/tape, that's a lot of
money.  The B-tapes on C-drives, if I recall, run at 5MB/sec, whereas the
C-tapes can run at 7.5/sec (15/sec with compression).

> B. My thought to perform the migration is to mark the existing B volumes as
> read only, label and checkin the C tapes, move data from the B volumes to
> the diskpool and let migration take the data to the C tapes in the scratch
> pool.  I thought about setting up another pool with another device class and
> simply doing a migration, but I'm space constrained in the library anyway so
> a manual process is in my future wether I like it or not.
>
> Thoughts?

I have done nothing about my mix of B and C tapes, without problems.  I
guess what you do with the B-tapes depends on how much money you can
afford to "throw away" without much justification.  For us, that answer
was $0.00.

Steve (unVMix Systems Programmer/Dude) Roder
(tkssteve AT ubvm.cc.buffalo DOT edu | tkssteve AT acsu.buffalo DOT edu | 
(716)645-3564 ,
   | http://ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu/~tkssteve)