never cleaned tape-drive.... clean or leave alone?

[joebloeonthego]

Hello, there's a tape-drive here that has never been cleaned. I bought a cleaning tape, but I just want to make sure it's not one of those things that if it's gone on this long it's better to just leave it then to mess with it. I _think_ it's a couple years old, doing backups daily. It takes DDS3 tapes.

 

[gwichman]

A couple of years doing daily backups and never cleaned? Thats hard to believe.. Do you test and ensure the tapes you're creating are indeed readable? I would clean it if indeed you're correct in your assessment just for the heck of it. But most drives have a tape cleaning indicator light that will tell you when they need cleaning. Also if you see any errors that might prompt you to clean it (if the errors repeat and is not specific to some tape or other variable). If there is no light the manual for the drive probably specifies some rule of thumb to follow.

Personally i've found the drive cleaning indicators not to be the most reliable things on the planet. I would go for some sort of more standardized rotation/schedule then waiting for the light to tell you when to clean it.