What I generally do is watch for drive errors and the tapes that cause
it.  If the same drive is causing errors I assume the drive is going.
Each time I receive a tape error I document the date and tape, audit the
tape, if errors exist I move the data off and make it a scratch tape,
otherwise I set the tape back to read/write.  After 3 occurances I move
the data off and throw tape way.  It seems to work well for us.

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Bill Rozmiarek
Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 9:26 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: When Good Tapes Go Bad

How do you go about determining that a tape is bad and needs to be
thrown
replaced? The way I do it is to keep track of any tapes that have been
set
to read-only due to an error (q act msg=1411). When I see one, I mark it

read-write and keep track of it. When the same tape gets set to
read-only
due to an error a second time, I do a 'move data' if there's anything on
it
and then eject it, delete the volume, and replace it with a new tape. I
don't know that that tape is really bad so I could be throwing tapes
(and
money) in the garbage unnecessarily.
Is there a way to certify a tape like I can a disk?
How do you determine that a tape needs to be replaced?

-Bill

--
Bill Rozmiarek
http://GatheredTogether.org - Ministries Helping Ministries