On Monday, September 29, 1997 8:47 AM, [log in to unmask]
[SMTP:[log in to unmask]] wrote:
> Item Subject: cc:Mail Text
>      I have a customer with seven(7) DDS-2 drives.  He has had to have
all
>      the drives replaced over the past few months.  The problem he is
>      encountering is that, during backups, he is getting what would be
>      considered excessive tape cleaning requests.
>
>      I was wondering if anyone else is or has been experiencing a similar
>      situation.  If so, what, if anything, has been done to rectify the
>      problem?
>
>      Has anyone seen similar problems with DDS-3?
>
We have had a long history with DDS-1 and DDS-2. Equally we have had
problems with the mechs. On average we replaced a particular mech every 6
months.

This continued until I moved the printers from the computer room to a
separate area (including the laser printer). After about one more
relacement, (about 18 months ago) we haven't replaced a mechanism again.
This is really great after having to take down a machine every four months
to replace the tape mech (I never like to take the 3000s down).

The symptoms were always the same. Operators finding that the backups were
still waiting for another tape (first tape marked as bad) and putting
production behind schedule. This would increase with frequency until we had
to clean the tape mech everyday (and still have problems).

Any more, if we have a recurring bad tape problem, I call in the RC.... but
not lately.