Hi!!!

Yeah Michael, we started that thread 'cos we had a stack of similar errors. The 
system gets an error, marks the tape r/o, and then you find out its got vcr 
errors. You can move the data off the vcr-damaged tapes, but it takes time.

There was a bad batch of 3570 tapes late last year... I do have the details 
somewhere.. and when I find them I will forward to you. We got an IBM engineer 
to come out and he put on the latest microcode for the 3570.

We also got some weird sense code errors, and I put them on this mailing list 
to see if anyone knew what they meant, but as yet I have not got any response.

We are keeping a close eye on the systems to see if reliability has improved - 
'cos we were getting a lot of vcr errors and it was ruining our backups.

Run manual tape-cleans at least once a week. I think the new microcode on the 
3570 should do this automatically, but I have my doubts.

All in all, I think ADSM is great.. fantastic even... but these 3570 units and 
their Magstar tapes leave me wondering at times. We are investigating other 
tape media before we commit big-time to a full enterprise ADSM solution.

Regards
Shane