Re: Tape Drive Failed During Backup - No Halt

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.