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Really annoys me that procedure where I work is to initialize the tape every night. Old habits die painfully hard. I have suggested that the expiration date be changed from *PERM to a value more in line with the tape rotation. That date could be generated from a CL program.

My biggest issue with continual tape initialization, beyond excessive wear and tear (which is a big issue), is that the wrong tape could be pulled and the data destroyed.

I have also complained that tapes should have unique volume numbers, not stupid things like DAILY. But, nobody seems to care. I even showed them PRTERRLOG output. And people wonder why things fail sometimes.

I worked in a bank thirty years ago that used 9 track tape. Only time tapes were initialized was when the BOT marker was replaced.

John McKee


-----Original message-----
From: Simon Coulter shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 19:03:14 -0500
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: 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.
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