AM-64x DAT High Capacity Tape Drives
Page 35
PDI-00649-00, A01
MAINTENANCE
If excessive magnetic dust and debris collects on one or more of the heads, magnetic media may become
unreadable and unwriteable. This situation may occur infrequently, or not at all, depending on the media
used.
Whenever the applicable LED indicates a cleaning is required, you should clean the drive heads with a
cleaning cassette.
To clean the heads on the DAT drive, use only a qualified DDS DAT cleaning cassette designed for
your drive.
The DDS cleaning cassette contains the correct recognition holes to allow the DAT drive to recognize
that it is a cleaning cassette.
Follow these general guidelines to use the cleaning cassette:
•
Insert the cleaning cassette into the DAT drive. The drive will immediately detect that this is a
cleaning cassette.
•
The drive will load and run the cleaning cassette and then eject it after the cleaning process is
completed.
•
Each time the cleaning cassette is used it advances to an unused portion of the tape. Eventually
the entire tape is used up. If the cleaning cartridge does not automatically eject, the cleaning
portion of the tape has been used up. Press the unload button to eject the cleaning cartridge and
discard it.
Do not use an audio DAT cleaning cassette! It will not be properly recognized by your DAT tape
drive.
TAPE FORMATS, USAGE, AND CAPACITIES
All tapes used in the DAT drive should be computer grade. Low cost tapes designed for audio DAT
drives should never be used with your DAT drive! Computer grade DAT tapes are made of better
materials and therefore will show a lower rate of data errors than audio quality DAT tapes. The computer
quality DAT tapes do not "shed" as much magnetic material compared to audio quality DAT tapes and
therefore less head cleaning is required. By using computer grade tapes you reduce the possibility of
damaging the DAT drive tape heads.
A number of different size tapes are available for your DAT drive. We strongly recommend using only
60 and 90 meter tapes with all drives, and up to 120 meter DDS-2 tapes with the 8-gigabyte AM-649-01
drive.