Have Dell Super DLT tape 1 's when I look at tape statistics in Devices for 10.0 I get Hours used,mounts, seeks. Only info I get from DLTtape.com about tape is 30 year archive life and 1,000,000 head pass durability. What is considered a head pass?? Just trying to figue out when we might neeed to purchase and rotate in new SDLT's. Thanks for any input
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SDLT Tape Life
- Thread starter rickb80
- Start date
Everytime the same spot of tape goes across the head, it's a pass. So if you constantly overwrite the same tape, the front of the tape will wear out before the less used end of the tape. So fill your tapes if you can. Also, remember that formating is a pass, verify is a pass, cataloging is a pass and so on.
The reality is that you will have more shedding of media if the drives are not kept clean or if you use cheap media. So the measurement is optimal on a perfect system. Watch for soft errors on a tape. Any more than a few over the entire tape is cause to dump the tape. Tapes are cheap compared to rebuilding lost data due to a faulty tape.
MikeS
Home of the book "Network Security Using Linux"
The reality is that you will have more shedding of media if the drives are not kept clean or if you use cheap media. So the measurement is optimal on a perfect system. Watch for soft errors on a tape. Any more than a few over the entire tape is cause to dump the tape. Tapes are cheap compared to rebuilding lost data due to a faulty tape.
MikeS
Home of the book "Network Security Using Linux"
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