>Just a side note:  I thought the press releases for AIT-2 technology =
>stated that these drives are self-cleaning.  If this is true, why does =
>Sony make cleaning tapes?

From www.sony.com/ait :

   Active Head Cleaner reduces need for cleaning tapes.
   In the event that contamination build-up does occur, the Sony AIT drive
   provides an automated cleaning solution. The Active Head Cleaner is a
   built-in, head cleaning mechanism that is activated when soft errors (ECC,
   rereads, rewrites) reach a certain threshold. This greatly reduces the need
   for cleaning tapes and the operational problems they can cause.

That magic word, "reduces".  As a guy with a mechanical engineering degree, I
have to wonder what happens to all the crud it removes from the tape, within
the drive.  Perhaps the drive has to be serviced periodically to remove that
accumulation and refresh its cleaning abilities.

   Richard Sims, BU