Media color changes for media sets, append periods

[Frank_Lane]

Is it true that media in the color BLACK is completely unavailable to be written to?  I have a robotic library that has partitions set up to use for specific jobs.  When the job runs, it uses media from the Scratch Media set, then moves it to my Monthly Full media set that I created (as the job specifies).  After it moves the media to my media set, the color changes to BLACK.  I would like to continue to append to this particular media (for next month's job), but my understanding is the media is unavailable to be written to if the color is BLACK.  Is it true that the color must be BLUE for a tape to be used?  The Append Period is set to Infinite - Allow Append for the media set.  I just want to better understand how media is used and why the color changes.

My goal is to completely fill up the tape before it moves to the next tape.  It will keep appending until the tape is full, then move to the next tape.  I don't want a new job to necessarily use a new tape.

[Ken_Putnam]

BLACK  rather than BLUE  just means that the tape cannot be overwritten because the data on the tape is still within the OPP for the media set

You can append to a BLACK tape as long as the APP has not expired

Remember that APP is figured from the time that the first data is written to the tape, and never changes until the tape is overwritten , but OPP is figured from the time that the last data is written to tape, and changes every time you append

Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 12-19-2007 11:14 AM

[Frank_Lane]

That's good.  I have no desire to overwrite the media, so this is what I'm looking for.  Just wanted to make sure I could still write (append) to the tape once the color changed to black.

Thank you!