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23
Chapter 3
3. Preventive Maintenance
The only routine maintenance required by the tape drive is regular cleaning
of the tape drive heads and tape path. Proper storage and maintenance of
your data cartridges maximizes the shelf life of your tapes and assures data
integrity.
Recommended Cleaning Cartridges
Silicon Graphics recommends that you clean your tape drive with the
Exabyte 8 mm cleaning cartridge (supplied with your package) or an
Exabyte-approved cartridge. Using this cleaning cartridge regularly allows
you to maintain data integrity and improve reliability of the tape drive.
Caution: Using a cleaning method or cleaner other than the recommended
brand can void the tape drive warranty and possibly lead to premature wear
of the recording head.
Determining When to Clean the Tape Drive
You should clean the tape drive’s heads either once a month or after every
30 tape motion hours (or more frequently if you are operating in a
particularly dirty environment).
The tape drive keeps track of its tape motion hours internally. When 30 tape
motion hours have elasped, the top and bottom LEDs will flash rapidly and
the middle LED will flash irregularly, depending on SCSI bus activity. For
best results, clean the tape drive as soon as possible after the LEDs begin
flashing. Table 2-1 in Chapter 2 describes the LED pattern indicating that the
tape drive needs cleaning.