IBM Support

VXA cleaning cartridge life expectancy - IBM VXA-320 tape drive

Troubleshooting


Problem

This tip discusses how often a VXA X style cleaning cartridge can be used.

Resolving The Problem

Source

RETAIN tip: H094858

Issue

This tip discusses how often a VXA X style cleaning cartridge can be used.

Affected configurations

This tip is not machine specific.

The system is configured with one or more of the following IBM Options:

  • 160 / 320 GB VXA-320 SCSI Tape Drive, Option 25R0045
  • Tape Storage 80 / 160 GB, Option 59P6746

This tip is not Operating System specific.

Additional information

VXA X style of cleaning cartridges may bear the information that the cartridge can be used for 80 cleanings. This information is found on the cleaning cartridge as well as on the cover sheet included with the cartridge case.

It is strongly recommended to only use X style cleaning cartridges as they work for both VXA-2 and VXA-320 tape drives.

The following applies to:

  • VXA-2 tape drive FW 2123 or higher
  • VXA-320 tape drive FW 320C or higher

The time per cleaning cycle has been doubled so that the numbers of uses of a cleaning cartridge is cut in half.

Because of this new covers and labels for the cleaning cartridges are produced that will not contain the number of uses anymore but rather this statement:

Capacity is application and drive dependent

This means that it can not be stated anymore how long a cleaning cartridge will last. These new cleaning cartridges will be reaching users in the near future.

The above information applies to both types of cleaning cartridges that do or do not include the information that they can be used for 80 cleanings.

Some additional information:

  1. Use the cleaning cartridge only when the tape drive asks for cleaning.
    Note: There may be customer issues where the service personnel will ask the user to perform additional cleaning passes with a cleaning tape.
  2. Consider a cleaning cartridge as expired once the cleaning cartridge gets ejected and the cleaning LED is still illuminated .

For obtaining the latest code updates for the VXA-2 and VXA-320 tape drives do the following:

  1. Go to the following URL: http://www.ibm.com/systems/support
  2. Select Hardware Upgrades.
  3. Search for the document TAPE -FILES.

Document Location

Worldwide

Operating System

System x Hardware Options:All operating systems listed

[{"Type":"HW","Business Unit":{"code":"BU016","label":"Multiple Vendor Support"},"Product":{"code":"QU00PTV","label":"System x Hardware Options->Tape Drive->80 \/ 160 GB->59P6746"},"Platform":[{"code":"PF025","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Line of Business":{"code":"","label":""}},{"Type":"HW","Business Unit":{"code":"BU016","label":"Multiple Vendor Support"},"Product":{"code":"QU01SBV","label":"System x Hardware Options->Tape Drive->160 \/ 320 GB->25R0045"},"Platform":[{"code":"PF025","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Line of Business":{"code":"","label":""}}]

Document Information

Modified date:
29 January 2019

UID

ibm1MIGR-5073216

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