Phil, please clarify.........did you completely replace the B1A drives
with new E1A drives, or did IBM convert your existing B1A's to E1A's with
an upgrade kit?





"James, Phil" <Phil_James AT CALPERS.CA DOT GOV>

Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
19-Nov-2002 18:10
Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>




        To:     ADSM-L

        cc:
        Subject:        Re: 3590 Tape Drives

I experienced some problems with the B1A drives also, but we caused some
of
our own problems.
We were running them 23 out of 24 hours every day.
We cured the problem by going to the E1A and adding more tape drives.

The different between the drives is the B1A are 128 track, the E1A are 256
track and the H1A are 384 track drives.
You gain one third capacity for every increment you go up on your drives.

We current have a total of 30 E1A tape drives between the open systems
backup and the MVS systems native drives.
Average at the most maybe two calls per year on the same drive different
problems never the same.
We still have a high percentage use per day.

Philip A. James, Systems Software Specialist
Software Services Unit
Information Technology Services Division / Data Center
California Public Employees' Retirement System
Phone: (916) 326-3715
Fax:     (916) 326-3884
Email:  phil_james AT calpers.ca DOT gov




-----Original Message-----
From: Martina Sawatzki [mailto:msa AT OERAG DOT DE]
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 2:50 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: 3590 Tape Drives


Hi,

We are working with a 3494 IBM silo with 4  drives - 3590 type B -  which
is connected to a RS/6000. As we are having lots of  hardware problems
with
these drives we think about changing them to 3590 drives type E.
Does anyone have experience with this type of tape drive ? I`m mainly
interested in a kind of comparison concerning performance and availibility
between the both types B -> E.

Thanks a lot
Martina