Reusing recycled tape and optical volumes

You can use the MOVEVOL command with the RECYCLE option to recycle optical and rewritable tape volumes. After all the objects have been moved off of the tape volume or both sides of an optical platter, OAM processes the volumes as specified in the SETOAM TAPERECYCLEMODE and SETOPT OPTICALREINITMODE keywords in the CBROAMxx PARMLIB member. When a tape volume is released from DFSMSdfp, DFSMSrmm also releases the volume.

The main reason to recycle a tape or optical volume is to reuse the volume for new data and to save money on buying new media. Many partially full tapes or optical volumes using slot space in a library is considered wasted space. You can use MOVEVOL with the RECYCLE option to consolidate data from many partially full volumes and move that data to one volume, freeing up volumes that you can use for new data. The MOVEVOL command with the RECYCLE option overrides the SETOAM TAPERECYCLEMODE or SETOPT OPTICALREINITMODE options.

For optical volumes, the MOVEVOL command with the RECYCLE option moves objects on both sides of the optical platter (both volumes). In contrast, the MOVEVOL command without any options moves objects on only one side of the optical platter (one volume).

To recycle an optical or rewritable tape volume, issue the following command:

MODIFY OAM,START,MOVEVOL,volser,RECYCLE

When a volume is released from DFSMSdfp, DFSMSrmm also releases the volume.

Attention: If the MOVEVOL with RECYCLE process is interrupted, all three of the following conditions are true:

For tape media, the logical kilobytes deleted field in the tape volume is not updated, so it would be inaccurate.
For rewritable optical media, the deleted objects are not inserted in the Deleted Objects table, so orphaned objects remain on the media and the space is not reclaimed until the volume is reformatted. The number of deleted objects and deleted space are not updated, so it would be inaccurate.
The tape volume or both sides of the optical platter are left in non-writable mode.