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| All tape
drives require cleaning at regular intervals to prevent damage to tapes
and the drive heads. The regularity of cleaning (the cleaning cycle) of
a drive is usually defined by the drive manufacturer, although some drive
models are intelligent enough to sense when cleaning is required. These
models usually have a display on the front that indicates when cleaning
is required. The drive cleaning strategy is defined by the type of drive, and if applicable the autochanger in which the drive resides. Certain autochangers have specific slots allocated for cleaning media. In conjunction with an ‘intelligent’ drive, this allows the autochanger to automatically load the cleaning media when requested by the drive. |
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| It is also
possible to define the cleaning strategy of a drive or drives using FlashNet.
When drives are added, a cleaning cycle value can be entered, in gigabytes.
FlashNet keeps a record of the amount of data written to each drive, and
when the drive’s cleaning cycle is reached FlashNet stops any operations
and requests that the drive be cleaned. If an autochanger has been configured
to include cleaning media in the Autochanger Setup window the autochanger
automatically loads the cleaning media and the drive is cleaned. If the
drive is standalone the user must manually load a piece of cleaning media. |
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| Configuring
FlashNet to clean drives (standalone) The cleaning cycle of a standalone drive is configured at the time the drive is added to the installation. Entering a value in the Cleaning Cycle field causes FlashNet to request cleaning when that amount of data has been written to the drive. This value can be edited at any time by selecting the drive and choosing Modify from the Drive menu. |
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Configuring FlashNet to Clean Drives (Autochangers) |
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| 1. | Ensure that at least one slot in the autochanger contains a piece of cleaning media. | |||
| 2. | In the Autochanger Setup window, select that slot and choose Name Volume from the Magazine menu. | |||
| 3. | Click the cleaning media icon adjacent to the Name Volume field. The name ‘Cleaning_Media’ is automatically inserted into this field. | |||
| 4. | Confirm that the Start position is correct and if necessary input the number of slots to be defined for cleaning media in the Number of Slots field. | |||
| 5. | Click Apply. | |||
| 6. | From the File menu choose Save. | |||
| 7. | Close the Autochanger Setup window and open the Drive Configuration window. | |||
| 8. | Select the drive to be configured and choose Modify from the Drives menu. In the Clean Every field type a value which corresponds to the amount of data (in gigabytes) that the drive must write before it must be cleaned. | |||
| 9. | In the cleaning media list at the bottom of the window locate the cleaning media that has just been added. Select the cleaning media. | |||
| 10. | From the Cleaning menu, select Define Passes. Define the number of passes for that piece of media by using the up and down buttons or typing the required value in the field. The number of passes is the amount of times that this media can be used (cleaning media have a life span limited to a certain number of passes - this figure should be displayed somewhere on the media itself or the media packaging). | |||
| 11. | From the File menu choose Save. | |||
==END== |
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