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CoMurphy's avatar
CoMurphy
Level 4
10 years ago

LTO-4 Retirment Policy

Hello does anyone have a best choice or retirement policy for using LTO-4 tapes? We feel our tapes may be a bit too old but we aren't sure what the best time frame would be.       Thanks,...
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  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    10 years ago

    Those status 84 - are those SCSI sense key code "Recorded entity not found " ?. Usually when tape drive is on the decline, they start to throw a growing number of "Recorded entity not found". Also read and write speed is not where near original speed because of read/write corrections.

    With a 3 week retention, max usage over a 4 year period will be no more than 70 full writes. That is not enough to wear out a tape.

    See the Tape durability table at Wikipedia (Pls ensure to read the table correctly).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open

    According to the table, you are nowhere near end of service life of the tapes. 

    I have still LTO4 in operation - but will be replaced in 2015 due space congestion in my robots.

    If the capacity is OK for you and you have plenty of avaiable tapes, a continued use to use them should be OK Once vendors won't support LTO4 anymore - its time to replace for real.

    Hope you can use the info

    Best Regards

    Nicolai

     

Nicolai's avatar
Nicolai
Moderator
10 years ago

Those status 84 - are those SCSI sense key code "Recorded entity not found " ?. Usually when tape drive is on the decline, they start to throw a growing number of "Recorded entity not found". Also read and write speed is not where near original speed because of read/write corrections.

With a 3 week retention, max usage over a 4 year period will be no more than 70 full writes. That is not enough to wear out a tape.

See the Tape durability table at Wikipedia (Pls ensure to read the table correctly).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open

According to the table, you are nowhere near end of service life of the tapes. 

I have still LTO4 in operation - but will be replaced in 2015 due space congestion in my robots.

If the capacity is OK for you and you have plenty of avaiable tapes, a continued use to use them should be OK Once vendors won't support LTO4 anymore - its time to replace for real.

Hope you can use the info

Best Regards

Nicolai