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how to find out the "lifetime" of DD5-tapes? NOT MTBF..
Hello,
some advanced backup-solutions do allow to define the "tapelifetime" in order to be able to use/take a new tape from the tape-recycling pool before the tape in questions really gets broken(e.g. too many read/write-errors). It's quite easy to find out the MTBF of different tapedrive- types but not the lifetime of the tape/media itself.. (of course that's not the case with high-end drives like LTO which claims 10'000 load/unload cycles and 20'000 short section read passes). Any tip is appreciated very much. Thank you! John Can somebody point me to such load |
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how to find out the "lifetime" of DD5-tapes? NOT MTBF..
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how to find out the "lifetime" of DD5-tapes? NOT MTBF..
"Paul Rubin" wrote in message
... writes: some advanced backup-solutions do allow to define the "tapelifetime" in order to be able to use/take a new tape from the tape-recycling pool before the tape in questions really gets broken(e.g. too many read/write-errors). Some drives let you read the error count registers but the commands are drive specific. The problem isn't so much to get the error counters (Log sense page 2 and 3 on almost all tape drives), but what conclusions to draw from them. If you write 10GB to tape and the Total Corrected error counter is at 1000, is that good or bad?? These are good for trend analysis when using known references, but it's very hard to claim that a particular drive or tape is bad just because it clocked a certain number of soft errors. Vendors will not provide hard numbers of x % error rate as a cut-off point when you need to throw the tape away. Rob |
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how to find out the "lifetime" of DD5-tapes? NOT MTBF..
In article I5rtf.3008$zc1.1352@amstwist00,
Rob Turk wrote: "Paul Rubin" wrote in message ... writes: some advanced backup-solutions do allow to define the "tapelifetime" in order to be able to use/take a new tape from the tape-recycling pool before the tape in questions really gets broken(e.g. too many read/write-errors). Some drives let you read the error count registers but the commands are drive specific. The problem isn't so much to get the error counters (Log sense page 2 and 3 on almost all tape drives), but what conclusions to draw from them. If you write 10GB to tape and the Total Corrected error counter is at 1000, is that good or bad?? These are good for trend analysis when using known references, but it's very hard to claim that a particular drive or tape is bad just because it clocked a certain number of soft errors. Vendors will not provide hard numbers of x % error rate as a cut-off point when you need to throw the tape away. Rob Agreed. When I ran a pool of tapes I made a practice of rotating the tapes with error rates in the top few percent into non-critical uses. Since most tapes had near-zero errors and a few had a distinctly higher rate I figured I was pruning out the lemons. It's not like I was throwing out those tapes. It wasn't costing me any money. -- a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. |
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how to find out the "lifetime" of DD5-tapes? NOT MTBF..
On Sat, 31 Dec 2005 09:14:36 +0100, "Rob Turk"
wrote: "Paul Rubin" wrote in message ... writes: some advanced backup-solutions do allow to define the "tapelifetime" in order to be able to use/take a new tape from the tape-recycling pool before the tape in questions really gets broken(e.g. too many read/write-errors). Some drives let you read the error count registers but the commands are drive specific. The problem isn't so much to get the error counters (Log sense page 2 and 3 on almost all tape drives), but what conclusions to draw from them. If you write 10GB to tape and the Total Corrected error counter is at 1000, is that good or bad?? These are good for trend analysis when using known references, but it's very hard to claim that a particular drive or tape is bad just because it clocked a certain number of soft errors. Vendors will not provide hard numbers of x % error rate as a cut-off point when you need to throw the tape away. Rob If your tape drive supports the TapeAlert feature, then one of the defined functions in the spec will report not only when the tape needs to be replaced, but also when the tape is nearing end-of-life. There are a few caveats, like having a tape drive that uses this optional parameter in its implementation of TapeAlert, and having some software (such as ours -- shameless plug that decodes and reports it, but you can certainly write your own application. To see if the TapeAlert mechanism an the media-related warnings are impmlemented for your particular drive, then consult the documentation. David Lethe http://www.santools.com |
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