pre-initialized tapes

[mletendre]

Is there a way to pre-initialize tapes for Legato's Networker? We have some tools that will allow us to initialize tapes in a variety of formats (ASCII, EBCIDIC, Etc) but I am not sure how Networker will respond to this, also not sure what the volser label internally is designed as.

 

[605]

In NW you just have to LABEL tapes - there is no other step. You can let NW do it automatically or you can manually label the tapes in advance.

 

[mletendre]

I am wondering about labeling them outside of NW. We have a colleague who is having problems with some 3592 tapes, every time he tried to label them in NW he gets a permission denied error. We initialize tapes here for many customers but I am not familiar with NW's format

 

[605]

Of course you can label tapes with another software. However, all software i have seen so far is only able to accept its own labels.

The other issue is that if you label tapes by another NW system, the intended one will not 'know' the media until you will scan or relabel it there. Consequently, your work might be good as a service but it will not really help your customer.
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I just googled for IBM 3592 tapes an i verified that these are also available as WORM (Write Once, Read Many times) tapes. Could the problem just be that you try to rewrite these tapes? - such of course would not be possible.

 

[mletendre]

Yes I am positive these are not WORM tapes.

I am just stumped why their system is not able to accept these. We have done similar work for many customers for years and they never have this problem. some systems have an issue if the tapes are not preinitialized because of the Chip in T10000 and 3592 tapes.