13 Validating Media

You can validate the integrity of T10000 cartridges using the media validation (MV) feature.

Contents

• Add or Remove Drives from the Media Validation Partition (Pool)

• Validate a T10000 Tape (Media Validation)

See Also

• "Partitioning the Library"

• "Managing Tape Cartridges"

• "Managing Drives"

Add or Remove Drives from the Media Validation Partition (Pool)

To use media validation (MV), you must dedicate drives to a special Media Validation partition containing T10000C or D drives. The partition can only contain drives (not storage cells). Hosts cannot access the drives within the MV partition. The library automatically cleans MV drives regardless of the auto clean status for other partitions or individual drives in the MV pool.

Note:

When adding or removing drives from the MV partition, affected partitions will temporarily go OFFLINE.

1. Click Partitioning in the left navigation area of the GUI.

2. Click Assign Cells .

3. To add a drive — From the first drop-down list, select the source partition to move the drive from (if you have not partitioned the library, select the DefaultPartition). From the second drop-down list, select Media Validation.

   To remove a drive — From the first drop-down list, select Media Validation. From the second drop-down list, select the destination partition to move the drives to.

4. Click a module that contains drives (the green arrow below a module indicates the currently selected module).

5. Choose a Select Cells By method (for a description see "Partitioning Selection Methods").

6. Click a T10000C/D drive or an empty drive bay to add/remove. You can add non-supported drives, however these will not be used for media validation.

   TIP:

   Hovering over a drive will show the drive type.

   On the cell map, media validation drive bays are indicated by MV .

7. Click Next, and then apply the changes.

See Also

• "Validate a T10000 Tape (Media Validation)"

Validate a T10000 Tape (Media Validation)

The media validation (MV) feature evaluates the integrity of a T10000 tape contained in a storage cell. To use media validation, you must assign T10000C or D drives to the Media Validation partition (see "Add or Remove Drives from the Media Validation Partition (Pool)").

1. Click Cells/Tapes in the left navigation area of the GUI, and then click the Tapes tab.

2. Select a T10000 T1 or T2 tape from the tapes table. From the Actions drop-down (or right-click menu), select Media Validation.

   Note:

   You can only validate tapes in storage cells, not system cells. If you want to run media validation on a tape in a system cell, you must first move that tape into a storage cell.

3. Select the type of validation (see "Media Validation Types" below).

4. Select a drive. You should validate the media on a drive that is the same level or higher than used to write the media. For example, if the media was written using a T10000C drive, you could validate it on a C or D drive. However, if the media was written on a D drive, only use a D drive to validate the media.

   The drop-down shows the T10000C or D drives currently available in the Media Validation partition. To add a drive, see "Add or Remove Drives from the Media Validation Partition (Pool)".

Media Validation Types

Type	Description	Starts at	Approximate Duration per Tape
Basic Verify	Mount and dismount to determine if media information record (MIR) is unreadable or out of sync. The only test that is valid for blank tapes.	NA	2 minutes
Standard Verify	Verifies: - 1000 records from the beginning of tape (the highest-priority area of media) - The end of data (EOD) - Outermost wraps on top and bottom bands to verify edges Records are not decompressed nor decrypted.	Beginning of tape (BOT)	Maximum of 30 minutes regardless of the data and the compression ratio used
Rebuild MIR	Verifies the MIR and rebuilds it if necessary. Records are not decompressed nor decrypted. If there are errors, the drive begins reading data at tape speed from the last-known valid position on the MIR. If MIR is invalid or out of sync, the drive begins reading from the BOT, to gather the information to rebuild the MIR.	Last-known valid position in the MIR Or, beginning of tape to rebuild MIR	T10000C — 5 hours max T10000D — 9 hours max
Complete Verify	Verifies all data records on tape are readable. Reads data at tape speed. Records are not decompressed nor decrypted.	Beginning of tape	T10000C — 6 hours max T10000D — 9 hours max
Complete Verify Plus	Verifies all records on the tape are readable. Checks Data Integrity Validation (DIV). Data is decompressed and decrypted if records contain cyclic redundancy check (CRC) codes added by host. The drive must be encryption capable and connected to Oracle Key Manager. Not valid for FICON drives.	Beginning of tape	T10000C— 6 hours for compression ratios less than 2.5:1. T10000D — 9 hours for compression ratios less than 3:1