12-01-200506:36 AM
Re: Cleaning tape
If you just have one tape drive (not a Library), just insert your cleaning tape and the tape will clean by itself. It should eject the tape after the cleaning. If you have a Tape Library, using your backup software allocate one slot for "Cleaning Slot" and then do a cleaning through the backup software. You can also do this manually with Library control menu by mounting the cleaning media to the specified drive.
It's a good practice to clean the drive to keep it in a good shape, in other words you are doing a preventive maintenance.
How often you do this depend on how busy your tape drive is. A normal practice would be to clean it once in a month.
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