HP DL785 Error Prevention Guide - Page 12

Cleaning Drives DAT Drives Clean the tape heads of the drive regularly with a cleaning cartridge to maintain the integrity of backup data. For optimum performance and to prevent the loss of data, HP recommends that you incorporate a cleaning cycle into your backup routine. As a general guideline, you should clean the tape heads after every fifth backup cartridge. You should also clean the tape heads if the media caution signal (flashing amber light) is displayed on a tape drive or the Clean Me message is displayed on an autoloader. Refer to the device documentation for more information. Cleaning Cartridges Use only an HP cleaning cartridge to clean the tape heads. Do not use swabs or other means of cleaning the heads. The cleaning cartridge uses a special tape to clean the tape heads. A cleaning cartridge can only be used 50 times or as instructed on the cartridge packaging. When the cartridge runs out of tape, discard it and use a new one. LTO, SDLT, and DLT Drives Use the cleaning cartridge if cleaning is indicated by the backup software or if the Cleaning LED is on. Refer to the device documentation for more information. AIT Drives The tape drive has a cleaning roller built in, which assists in preventing and recovering from head contamination. This feature minimizes buildup on the read/write heads so fewer cleaning cycles with a cleaning cassette are required. However, HP recommends you schedule a routine cleaning every 100 hours of use to keep the tape drive in good working order. The drive also needs cleaning when the drive Status LED displays long flashes with short pauses. Refer to the device documentation for more information. Error Prevention Guide 13