>I've a simple question for the group, we are using a mixture of IBM and >FujiFilm LTO1 tapes in a IBM3584 library. Does anyone have a policy (or >your thoughts) on retiring tapes, i.e. after X number of read/writes or X >years service?
The problem with perennially new technologies is that we often don't have enough time to gain full experience with them to know what their life may be: we just go on to the next advance. You'll find numbers at the various tape vendor sites, such as: http://www.storagetek.com/products/product_page48.html Of course, tapes vary in manufacturing quality according to the day of week they were made, plant, batch, and all that; so the life expectancy of any given tape may wildly vary from the others in your library. And a problem reading a tape 3 years after it was created may owe to the drive and microcode which wrote it, rather than to the inherencies of the media. In short, with such media I don't think there can be any simple answer. Richard Sims
