Re: Tape Drive Failed During Backup - No Halt

[Jim Oberholtzer <midrangel@xxxxxxxxxx>]

 Jerry:

On point one, true, that is the biggest issue and a potential land 
mine.  If for instance you really need to apply a PTF in a hurry to fix 
a specific issue, you'll stop until the IPL clears the error causing the 
abnormal switch.  Most of the time not an issue, until it is.......

Since the tapes have a unique name you might be able to discern the 
error rates, but it is on a specific tape over time that shows how well 
a tape is doing, so I would hesitate to give much credence to the 
statistics you have.  My own tack would be to replace 25% of the tapes 
every  12 - 18 months or so without any statistics.  Tapes can last much 
longer than that but you don't want to find out the hard way one did not.

Jim Oberholtzer
CEO/Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects, LLC


On 9/28/2010 9:45 AM, Jerry Adams wrote:
> Thanks.  The abnormal state has existed for some time; just haven't gotten around to resetting it.  My understanding is that the biggest drag with an abnormal state is when installing PTFs at next IPL.
>
> I do initialize my tapes every day, but they get unique names.  A specific name, such as TAPEA, stays with Tape A and only Tape A.  I run the PRTERRLOG each weekend with a reset of the statistics.  Haven't noticed any high error rates, but the tapes came in the same time the 520 did so they might be getting a little haggard.