that becomes a real nightmare fast !
I've had to do that in the past and I can say that it really REALLY isn't
what you want to do !
How big is your library ?  I'd look into adding a storage expansion frame.
OR look into drive upgrades from B's to E's... that alone doubles your
capacity, then if you get "K" tapes you double again (so you end up with 4x
the capacity)

Last time I did it, I was just trying to make things last until we moved an
atl, at which time the added capacity would be added.  We had to bring in
tape racks, spend hours (generally a full day) checking tapes out, putting
them into the racks (making sure to keep them in order), putting scratch
tapes in, checking them into TSM.
Now generally about 3 days later we would have to do all this again... going
to a new section in the tape rack to put this group of volumes in so we
could keep things in volser order (no, our racks weren't large enough to
have absolute slots for all possible volsers)  OH and make sure and plan on
working at least one weekend day and maybe two because every now and again
you will have to take all the tapes out of the rack, sequence them all and
put them back in the rack...
Now after the HATE calls about how a restore failed of some critical data
due to media not being in the atl at 03:00 AM, remember it will take TSM one
hour for the ~insert media into the atl~ to time out, and getting up,
driving in, explaining at the ~calling Jesus to the cross~ meetings about
why an automated tape library requires a person to drive in at 03:00 to have
a tape mounted and why the restore then failed again because the data set
spanned tapes and you happened to randomly eject the 2nd tape to make room
for the first so as soon as you got home you got a page to return.....
Now, besides doing your regular work and all the previously mentioned stuff
you get to spend time figuring out which tapes, outside the atl, have now
gone scratch and may be checked back in... Oh and yes, you have to figure
out some way to easily generate some list of some 100 ? 200 ? 300 ? random,
not in sequence, volsers to build checkin commands around...

get the picture ? ? ?

Shoot me now, PLEASE !

just my 2 cents worth...

Dwight


-----Original Message-----
From: Farren Minns [mailto:fminns AT WILEY.CO DOT UK]
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:47 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: 3494 and tapes question.


Hi TSMers

I am looking at what to do in the next year or so when our tape library
becomes full. Baring in mind that we don't do much in the way of restores
(most backups are for DR), is it feasible to remove tapes from the library
and just keep them on site in case they are requested for a restore,
reclamation etc. Does anyone out there do this kind of thing and how does
it work for you?

Thanks all

Farren Minns - John Wiley & Sons Ltd