PowerVault 124T Drive requests cleaning

Hello mkapetina,

What that message means is that the tape drive read/writes heads are dirty & need to be cleaned.  You can clean the tape drive by using an LTO cleaning cartridge into your PV124T and loading that tape into the drive.  Then you will see a message on the front panel or in the web utility that will say cleaning drive.  After about 5 to 10 minutes the drive will be cleaned and the clean tape can be either ejected out of the PV124T or you can put it into an empty slot.  

Also with the PV124T you can leave the cleaning cartridge in the system & mark that slot as your cleaning slot so that when the drive need to be cleaned again the system will clean it on it’s own.  

Last thing is that cleaning cartridges are normally good for about 30-50 cleanings before they are in need of being replaced.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

I put a new Cleaning Cartridge from Dell into the powerwault in slot number 16

last week,,, and i had this message: Drive requests cleaning

on the configuration page (http://192.168.0.21/)

i have this:

Cleaning Tape

Enable or disable auto cleaning. With Auto Clean enabled the loader will automatically load the cleaning tape when the drive requests cleaning.

Select which slot contains the cleaning tape, or "None" to indicate that no cleaning tape is present.

Auto Clean

Cleaning Tape Location : 16

i don't understand why they ask me that, when i put an cleaning cartbridge

sorry for my bad english!

Hello mkapetina,

So what you will want to do is to enable auto clean & select slot16 as the cleaning slot.  Then what you will want to make sure that the cleaning media is in slot 16 & it should then when the drive needs to be cleaned go to slot 16 for the cleaning media & clean the drive.  Without the cleaning media in the designated cleaning slot the auto clean feature will not work.  

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

the cleaning cartridge is in slot number 16 (i just checked now)

on the configuration page auto clean is active and the Cleaning Tape Location is: 16

So I do not understand why I get warnings?

Hello mkapetina,

How old is your cleaning tape?  As if you are using an expired cleaning tape to clean the drive then you can get that message as the cleaning media is not able to get the drive cleaned as it should.  Also do you also have slot 16 setup as your cleaning media in your backup software?  As it is best to do that as well so that the software can tell the drive that it needs to be cleaned while it is doing a backup & your backups won’t fail due to a cleaning issue.                                                                                        

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Hello mkapetina,

Here is a link to a Symantec article that explains how to setup a cleaning slot. http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO98955&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1409325212738

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

This is how it setup. but i dont have Barcode on the cleaning cleaning cartridge. did you see something wrong ?

Acctualy is setuped like this on the symantec backup exec 2014

Slot information

Slot number: 16

Barcode:         CLNU00L1

Cleaning slot: Yes

Media information

Media label:   Empty

it's that right?

Hello mkapetina,

Yes that is the correct setting that you would want to have so that both the PV124T & BUE see the cleaning slot as slot 16 so that it can auto clean your drive when needed.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Ok but actually i dont have any barcode on the cleaning cartridge.

it's right ?

Hello mkapetina,

It is best to have a barcode on the cleaning media.  Now since you have assigned the cleaning slot on both the PV124T & backup exec you can get away without using a cleaning label & it should clean the drive automatically without you needing to run a cleaning job manually.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

ok so everything was been configured right before i received the warning.....

but why i received this warning:

Drive requests cleaning with an orange led flashing, if everything is ok

???

Hello mkapetina,

The PV124t has to give the error so that it can then go get the cleaning media out of the cleaning slot & clean the drive.  Now after the message that says the drive needs cleaning you should get another message that should say that the drive has been cleaned or if you look at the web utility should say that the drive has been cleaned.  If you were to get the message & the drive doesn’t get cleaned that is either due to it trying to finish the backup that it is currently on then will clean the drive or that your cleaning media might be expired or there might be an issue with the drive.  

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

A cleanroom is a controlled environment where products are manufactured.

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