Maintaining Drives; Cleaning The 4 Mm Dat And 8 Mm Tape Drives - Silicon Graphics POWER CHALLENGE User Manual

Cleaning the 4 mm DAT and 8 mm Tape Drives

Appendix B
B.

Maintaining Drives

This chapter describes how to use and maintain removable media drives. It
includes descriptions of front panel lights and switches and instructions on
cleaning and maintenance.
Always use digital data grade tapes to store or back up information
Note:
from your system. Use of a tape intended for audio or video recording may
not provide a stable digital recording, and can make it difficult or impossible
to retrieve accurate data.
The following are manufacturers' recommended cleaning schedules:
• Clean the 4 mm DAT drive every 25 hours of use.
• Clean the 8 mm tape drive once per month, or per every 60 GB of data
transferred.
When the drive heads are dirty and need cleaning, the units may exhibit read
and/or write errors.
To clean a drive, use only an approved cleaning kit. You can use a cleaning
kit a limited number of times before you must replace it. For example, you
can use the 4 mm drive kit approximately 60 times. Do not use cleaning kits
that are intended for use in audio DAT units, since these cassettes are not
recognized by the drives covered in this guide.
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