Hi all,

After we had four tapes sent to Tucson to try to retrieve the data off them
(one's tape had snapped- which was a 1° stgp collocated tape, and the other
three were the offsite backup tapes of the that 1° stgp and they are
unreadable),  found out that most of the problems I have been seeing and asking
the list about are probably due to bad media.  I was told that there was a
manufacturing process defect that affected 3570 Magstar MP tapes during the last
half of 1997.

We have about 1200 tapes that were manufactured during that time period.


IBM is going to ship up replacements upfront so we can get the data off the old
and onto the new.  Has anyone had experience with such a task?

The replacing will need to be done at 10 locations in different geographic
areas.  Approx 120 tapes per location, with a 3575 - L12 library with 3 3570 B
drives in each library at each location.  ADSM runs on J30s and J40s at these
locations.

Here at HQ, when we went from 3590B drives to 3590E drives in our 3494 library,
we just maked all the tapes readonly, and over the course of time, the tapes
were converted to the new format.  This one was easy-- you didn't have to figure
out how to move all the data, and pull the "old" tapes out whenever they were
empty- after they went to scratch and before used again in another stgp without
leaving the library & replacing all the offsite tapes, too.

Has anyone else had a similar experience, and how did you handle it?  Script for
searching the tapes when their access/status changes?  Move data off old tape to
DASD and then write to new tapes?  Plain old move data?

TIA

lisa





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