On Jan 17, 2005, at 4:12 PM, Coats, Jack wrote:

I would like to know how also.  I have not found a way with DRM, or in
native TSM.  This is because when a tape is made 'scratch', it looses
all the related information about the tape. ...

Indeed, trying to manage the tapes through automated means is
problematic for lack of support by the hardware. The 3494 does not
track tape usage or I/O errors on volumes (at least not as queryable by
the customer). And ADSM/TSM has never done that in a continuous way.
The only comprehensive stats are maintained when a tape is in a storage
pool. (Thus, if it were feasible for you to Define volumes to a storage
pool rather than employing a Scratch regimen, then some continuity of
stats could be had. But tapes have to check out, and tapes have to be
supplied for dbbackup and similar needs, so there is no good,
comprehensive scheme.)

The 3592 cartridge, like LTOs, has an embedded Cartridge Memory which
maintains a record of tape errors; but its RF technology is active only
when loaded into a tape drive. (In the future, I could imagine the
robotic picker being given RF capability to scan storage cells.) And
the info recorded in its 4 KB memory is limited.

A customer site needing to track volumes has to employ an external
method, which gathers data to store separate from the hardware-software
system. And such externalized approaches tend to miss things and become
desynchronized. All in all, there's no good answer to this.

    Richard Sims