Re: Long SAVSYS

Jim,

I don't throw the tapes away right away. We put them off to the side. If
we start noticing that we are getting a bunch of errors we are often able
to track it down to just one drive throwing the errors. Once we've
replaced that drive, and ran an INZTAP with a CLEAR(*YES) we're able to
put the tape back into circulation and it no longer has any errors. In
all the years of LTO3 I think we really only have had one tape go bad. We
have replaced a few drives.
In summary, I'd retain the bad ones long enough to determine if there's a
pattern in the drive.

Since BRMS we rarely INZTAP. Basically we reserve it for a backup that's
really gone bad and we want to use that same tape right now and not wait
for expiration (since the reserve tapes are in another city...).
CLEAR(*YES) is reserved for two purposes. Verifying a tape after a drive
replacement, and for when we go to LTO4.


Rob Berendt