On Friday 30 September 2005 11:32, Frank Smith wrote:
>--On Friday, September 30, 2005 11:13:55 -0400 Gene Heskett
<gene.heskett AT verizon DOT net> wrote:
>> On Friday 30 September 2005 02:54, Montagni, Giovanni wrote:
>>> I have changed our tape drive, because it started to fail to write
on
>>> tape. I have changed it with the same model.
>>>
>>> After sostitution, amanda cannot recognise the tape, every day it
>>> give me error like "Not an amanda tape", and i have to amrmtape
then
>>> amlabel the tape again.
>>>
>>> Is it possible to solve this problem?
>>>
>>> sorry for bad english.
>>>
>>> Giovanni
>>
>> The old drive may not have been doing a good job of rewriting the
>> labels, which are rewritten with the new date contained therein for
>> each use. As long as you don't have to do that to the same tape
again
>> till its worn out, you should be ok.
>>
>> Frankly, and I'm reading between the lines here, and coming to the
>> conclusion that many of todays drive are being built by robots and
>> the tracking adjustments that allow tape interchange between drives
>> is being done poorly, or not at all.  I'd certainly let the vendor
>> know that you are having a problem in that area.
>
>And the bigger concern is that if you can't read the labels, you
> probably can't read the data on the tape, either, so all of your old
> backups are about as useful as a pile of blank tapes.
>  You might want to keep the old drive around and give the heads a
good
>cleaning on the slim chance that you might be able to read one of
your
>old backups if you need to.

But I'd not use the so-called cleaning tape for that as those are
abrasive, and if the heads are about shot, the cleaning tape will
write a 'fini' to them quickly.  A chemical cleaning, done gently
with alcohol paint thinner and a chamois tipped stick intended
for cleaning vcr heads would be my choice in that event.  As long as
the motion of the cleaning rubbing is around the drum and not up and
down, and the touch is gentle, you should not do any further damage. 
A quick look with a microscope, before ANY cleaning, might be very
educational.  And, strange as it may seem, I've had plain water clean
heads that alcohol couldn't, but give it hours to dry before wrapping
a tape around the head as it must be absolutely bone dry from either
fluids use.  Otherwise it will grab the tape and wrap it around the
head about 200 times. Thats not a good thing...

>
>Frank
>
>> --
>> Cheers, Gene
>> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
>> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
>> 99.35% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
>> Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
>> message by Gene Heskett are:
>> Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.35% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.