Question(s) on 8mm tapes/drive, etc.

[Chuck Lewis <clewis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

We are using the IBM 9427-210 Cartridge Tape unit. It uses 8mm tape
cartridges. I noticed that our backups took almost TWICE as long as
normal last night. Looking at QHST showed nothing unusual (no jobs
running against it, no object locks, etc.).

I went into Service Tools and did (1) Start a Service Tool, (1) Product
activity log and (4) Work with removable media lifetime statistics. I
picked the 8mm option and found that the volume used for last nights
backup shows

Temporary Error                Perm Error
Read         Write                Read    Write
2484          2446493              0          0

It also has a ">" to the left of the Volume ID which indicates that
"Media may exceed replacement criteria". I have a BUNCH of others
showing this too.
These tapes are no more than 1 year old and are used on a 21 day
rotation.

Questions:

(1) Have I REALLY reached the life of these tapes ?
(2) What IS the life of an 8mm tape ?
(3) Could the drive be doing this ? It IS cleaned whenever the light
comes on indicating it needs to be cleaned (last time was middle of last
week).

MAN I miss my 3590 that I had at my last job !!! :-)

TIA !

Chuck


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