[Networker] Cleaning question

I know there's been a lot of discussion over having NW clean versushaving the tape library do the cleaning. I realize that not all methodswork best for everyone, but I have a fundamental technical question:

If you do have the tape library do the cleaning, will most tapelibraries wait until the drive is empty?

If they do, that makes sense to me. Otherwise, if instead, it simplywaits until the drive is idle, and moves the loaded tape back to theslot first then NW would still think the data tape was in there, and itwould get confused if the tape library didn't reload it when it was donecleaning, right? I mean, in that case, NW would be out of the loop, sothat's bad.

But, if it instead waits until the drive is empty then that's kind ofbad, too, because our drives usually always have a tape in them. Rarelyis a drive ever empty except when NW is unloading a tape and preparingto load another volume. So, in that case, a drive that needs to becleaned might sit for a long time waiting to be cleaned because thelibrary can't move a cleaner into the drive since it's occupied, whereasif NW instead did the cleaning then it could. Alternatively, maybe thelibrary would slip in just before NW could load the next volume, andthen NW would wait (pending) until the cleaning was done? Not sure whowould win in that case.


Thanks.

George


--
George Sinclair
Voice: (301) 713-3284 x210

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