HP 216886-B21 AIT Drive Reference Guide - Page 34

Cleaning the AIT Drive When a drive is cleaned according to a regular schedule, one cleaning cycle typically removes accumulated dirt and particle deposits. However, in a dusty environment, one cleaning cycle may not fully clean the AIT drive read/write heads. Up to four cleaning cycles may be necessary to fully clean the drive. Errors Resulting from Cleaning Neglect Failure to observe routine maintenance and cleaning of tape drives can result in the following errors: • Dropouts Caused by weak signal strength from dirty read/write heads, a dropout can result in reduced cassette capacity and backup performance. • Media errors The backup cassettes can be jammed, torn, or otherwise damaged by a dirty read/write head. • Read or write errors Because of a dirty read/write head, data may not be recorded on the cassette during backup. Even if the data is on the backup cassette, retrieval may not be possible if the dirty head cannot read the data. • Format failures During backup, data is laid on the cassette in a certain format for easy retrieval. A dirty write head can cause format failures, which means that data can be lost or impossible to retrieve. • Bad blocks Because of media damage (see media errors above), the cassette may not accept backup data. Also, the read/write head may be unable to retrieve data from bad blocks. 4-2 AIT Drive Reference Guide