AIX

Hi All,

Are there recommendations about the use of cleaning tapes in DDS devices?

Should I clean the tape only when the drive indicates cleaning? Should I clean it once a month, week, even every day?

Is it harmful to clean the tape every day?

Thanks for your insights.

--Peter

To get better results track the number of cleans ( usually vendor recommends a 50 time of clean as a life time for a cleaning tape ) save them in a dry place with no sunlight or any electro magnetic fields.

I always clean when the drives needs cleaning.

Yes, but it depends on your drive condition.

Can you tell me in what way it could harm my tape device?

Of course wear and tear effects and tape itself hitting the read/write heads

Cleaning tapes are a bit of rough tape that scrape the magnetic tape residue off of the working parts of the drive so if you over use them you will wear out the drive prematurely.

Most modern tape drives will let you know when they need cleaning.

If you use quality tapes and use the drive daily then about once a month should be fine for running the cleaner through it.

Always keep a cleaning tape for each drive / never use a cleaning tape in more than one drive.

Ideally the same applies for data tapes.

If you hope to restore a data tape on a different drive then check / test this works before you need to rely on it because there might be alignment differences between the drives meaning one drive will struggle reading a tape made on a different drive.

mahe sure the drive firmware is up to date.

Here is a useful tape doc for AIX:
Tape Help Package