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What to do with frozen tapes

jplally
Level 3

Let's assume you have a lot of tapes numbered from 1 - 1000 that you move into and out of your library and also onto storage racks that are also numbered 1 - 1000. Let's also assume that over time some of the tape(s) become frozen and are really damaged media. How do you handle the sticky barcode labels for all your frozen media. For example, say tapes 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, and 900 are frozen. How do you replace them? In the past we had barcode labels that you could remove and just put on a new tape, but the current labels are adhesive based. 

6 REPLIES 6

J_H_Is_gone
Level 6

Short of making your own bar-codes ( which you can with the right printer, software and labels) you are stuck with empty storage slots.

As my labels are 20 a page, you could just wait till you have 20 bad ones, then request from your vendor just those bar-codes you need.

My tapes all go off-site for storage, so I don't have on-site slots to keep track of.

jplally
Level 3

Thanks, that sounds reasonable. My tapes go offsite also but they come back before their expiration date, hence the racks. I also had to run some 'special' backups and those tapes are 'out of commission' also. Our Operators search for scratch tapes for anything with a blank date in the expiration field and it's driving them crazy to think a tape is eligible for scratch only to find out it doesn't exist. I was also thinking on just replacing older tapes over time by replacing  tapes 000001 through 000200 with 001001 through 001200.

J_H_Is_gone
Level 6

To solve the issue of the tape does not exist.

Once you know a tape is BAD and needs to be replaced, you can just right click and delete it from Netbackup (then it won't show up any more)  and you can put your bad tapes in a special place untill you can get them destroyed.  And make a list of new barcodes you need.

Andy_Welburn
Level 6

suppose that depends on the adhesive really!

As Judy suggests, you can make your own or maybe worth speaking to your supplier if they can do a page of one-offs (when you have that many!)?

Again, as Judy says, you can easily delete those tapes that are no longer available for use.

"I was also thinking on just replacing older tapes over time by replacing" - do it!

We had to go through a similar exercise some time back - the amount of errors we were getting on our older tapes was becoming a bit of an annoyance. They do tend to get worn & tired after a while (like the rest of us!). As an aside, you can actually set a physical tape expiration date if you want - the equivalent of a 'Sell-by' date - a date after which the tape can no longer be used for backups.

Nicolai
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP   

Keep track of what tapes has been decommissioned. Personally I use a Excel spreadsheet with a date,barcode label, density and cause for destruction.

Will_Restore
Level 6

back up the list to a good tape.

 

We "retire" the barcodes rather than risk a twice-used sticker peeling off inside the library.