According to the 'tape expert' I was speaking to, the number of mounts is irrelevant, tape life is more to do with haow the tapes are handled, stored, condition of the drives and most importantly if they are run above their streaming speed.Ī tape that is 'shoe-shined' can show signs of increased wear within a few uses, hence the reason the number of mounts is not generally useful. I did an investigation into tape condition, with the help of Imation. I've used it, and seen it used in other companies and it works very very well. The LTO Program also released a new LTO technology roadmap, detailing specifications up to twelve (12) generations of tape technology, extending the total capacity of data held on one LTO Ultrium. I'm not sure who markets this at the moment, but it was originally written by a company called Hi-Stor and monitors the conditions of the tapes and drives at a low level, being able to predict tape failure. What you need is a product called StorSentry. vendor A tape drive might speed step at 40, 60, 80, 120 MB/s - whereas vendor B drive might have only one minimum speed step of 80MB/s. Some have speed stepping at different levels to each other.
If your infrastructure is unable to meet minimum streaming speeds, then your media will wear out very quickly.įinal point.
SILVERSTACK LTO WRITE TIMES FULL
So it is easily possible to exceed 2000 full winds. So, for an 8 track media, that has a life span of 200 mounts, then it could well have been fully wound 1600 times! Hence what appears to be a low mount count life span of 200 mounts.Īnd remember each time a media is re-mounted, for append, or restore, then this involves more winding along the length of the media. What this means is that for an 8 track LTO media, then the media has been fully wound over once by the time it contains 1/8 of its capacity. 12 Work spaces such as Files, Manage, QC, Color and Transcode Config to speed up specific. To receive a refund, you must provide the original packaging and documentation. 11 Visual Controls for in depth Image Analysis and Full Screen Player. and I need to re-iterate that Martin's post re shoe-shine wear and tear is very important.Īfaik - LTO media are track based, and that they wind/write/read backwards and forwards, so to actually fill an LTO media involves several complete winds forward and backwards - I believe the number of tracks changes/changed across different generations of the LTO family - so for example to fill an LTO media with 8 tracks, involves 8 traversals of the entire length of the media - forward/back/forward/back.etc. Repack the item(s) in the original packaging materials. My understanding was that most tape vendors warrant media for about 200 full writes, which is almost the same as saying 200 mounts - you'll see why below.