Re: Ultrium 4 Tape Initialization

On 15/05/2010, at 5:35 AM, rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

But on a nightly
basis you do not need to run CLEAR(*YES). You will still have all the
tape space available if you run CLEAR(*NO). Basically it wiped out the
header and goes from there. Trust me, it just works. We've been doing
this for decades.

But why, on a nightly basis, do so many of you run INZTAP anyway? Just start the save at sequence 1 and let the save overwrite the previous data. By constantly running INZTAP you:
a) wear out the start of the tape :)
and
b) mess up the read/write error statistics for the tape.

Sure, initialise and clear a tape prior to disposing of it but otherwise a tape should be initialised once and just reused.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
FlyByNight Software OS/400, i5/OS Technical Specialists

http://www.flybynight.com.au/
Phone: +61 2 6657 8251 Mobile: +61 0411 091 400 /"\
Fax: +61 2 6657 8251 \ /
X
ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML E-Mail / \
--------------------------------------------------------------------