Cleaning drive never stop

[patrick_gelinas]

Hi , 

I have a Dell TL4000 and when a run a clean drive , the librairies load the cleaning tape , clean it and unload the tape .

But the problem it's because after the unload , the librairies load again the tape and reran again the cleaning ! and it running like it 50x .

It run until the tape was expired .. I change 4 time the cleaning tape but i have always the same problem ! 

What is the problem ???? 

thx

[mph999 · Accepted solution]

The drive is cleaned when it sends out a 'tape alert' which is detected by the library, which then loads the tape.

Or ....

If NBU is set to do the cleaning, same thing happens, the tape drive sends out a tape alert and NBU loads the cleaning tape.

A few things could have happened :

1.  The drive is worn out and keeps thinking it needs to be cleaned

2.  The drive has a fault and keeps sending out a tape alert

3.  Firmware issue (on the drive)

4.  Library has a fault and keeps cleaning the drive (probably not that likely)

I recommend you log a call with the hardware vendor.

(Oh, power off the drive and manually down it in NBU - cleaning tapes are abrasive and will damage the drive if overused (drive could be dead anyway, but best not to keep feeding it cleaning tapes).

Martin