Tape cleaning – looking after your data.

Posted on March 31st, 2014

Looking after your data is vital.

This is why solutions are sought after, back ups performed, duplicated, for that day you hope will never arrive.  The main point here is that your data is important. You have taken the time and commitment to look after it, therefore, it is important to take care of the peripherals that look after your data.

Tape drives, as sophisticated as they are,  do not look after themselves fully. The tape and the tape drive’s head are in direct contact (unlike a disk drive), this creates friction and over time dust and other particles will collect and build up on the head’s. This has the potential of data degradation on the LTO tape.

The tape drive has 4 heads. The cleaning head, to remove debris. The Erase head, to reset and realign. The Write head, for new data. The Read head, checks the write has been successful. In addition, algorithms run to detect errors and correct. Faults are recorded as a read or write error. With this process the drive can detect degradation and signal that a clean is required. A clean is also required after a number of hours operating or spooling a tape.

When a drive highlights a clean is needed, never ignore this request. The cleaning tape will remove the debris off the heads. Keep a note of the cleaning cycles the tape performs as each one has up to 50 (check your specific tape). Do not ignore cleaning as this will produce more errors, a decreased tape capacity, slower writing speeds, even corrupt data.

All cleaning cartridges are universal to all tape drives and models. It’s down to brand preference to which one you purchase. Please bare in mind that a cleaning tape is abrasive so do not over clean the tape drive.

Please contact us if you have any questions or queries at info@imagestore.co.uk or 02380 736500.

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