Path Technology

Here's the second part to this important overview: more care-and-feeding for your backup tapes and tape drives.

1. Tape Life

A good rule of thumb is to use 4mm, 8mm and Travan tapes no more than 52 times before retiring the tape from active use. Although tape manufacturers may state that their product can be used more often, we prefer to emphasize reliability.

2. Extend The Life of Your Media
   • Avoid dropping tapes. If you do drop a tape, retension the tape before the next use. Store tapes in their boxes to avoid dust and dirt.
   • Retension your tapes.
   • Avoid extreme temperatures. Room temperature is the optimum storage temperature.
   • If a tape has been exposed to high heat or cold, let it come to room temperature and retension the tape before use.
   • Do not touch the actual tape itself.
   • Do not use bulk media erasers.
3. Dropped Cartridges

If a Travan cartridge is dropped it can misalign or permanently damage the tape guiding components inside the cartridge and possibly render the cartridge unusable. If the cartridge has been dropped it may be suitable for a single use. As with all high capacity and high performance media, it is recommended that the data on a dropped cartridge be copied to another cartridge. First the cartridge must undergo a retensioning pass prior to use. Once the data has been copied to a new cartridge, the dropped cartridge should be disposed of.

4. Tape Retensioning

Travan data cartridges do require periodic retensioning to operate properly in your tape drive. Retensioning restores the proper tension and removes any pack shift. Proper tape tension ensures the drive head is in good contact with the tape media in the data cartridge.

5. Retensioning Should be Performed when:
   • The cartridge is new and is being used for the first time.
   • If the cartridge has not been used for over a month.
   • The cartridge has been exposed to changes in temperature. (Note: Allow the media to acclimate to its surroundings before retensioning.)
   • If the cartridge has been "shoe shining" (back and forth over the same spot on the tape) and the backups are proceeding slowly. This "shoe shining" causes loss of tape tension.
   • A failure code is reported by the drive during a write or read operation when backing up. Retensioning the cartridge may solve the problem.
   • If a cartridge has been dropped. Assess the damage and retension as stated above.
6. Guidelines for Cleaning the Tape Drive

Please check with your drive manufacturer for their recommended cleaning routine. Tape drives do require routine cleaning. How often you clean your drive can be based on the tape usage and environment.

7. Do you use the tape drive for at least three hours every day? If the answer is 'Yes', then clean your tape drive at least once a week.