Apr 28, 2018
LTO tape storage technology is very poorly designed, typically there are no air filters on the tape drives, and there is an air circulation system that constantly sucks dust directly through the tape drive mechanism.
But the drive system is sensitive to dust, and the solution is that you have to clean it with tape cleaning media. But even so the cleaning media is itself mildly abrasive and slowly wears down the drive heads until they no longer work.
... Here’s an idea, how about designing tape drives that turn themselves off, or go into an ultra low power idle state when they’re not doing anything, and don’t need cooling?
Or maybe design tape drive systems to have a HEPA micron particulate filter on the front of them to protect a stand-alone tape drive or robotic tape library from dust?
Yet oddly it seems absolutely no LTO manufacturer does this. It’s as if they are intentionally designing their products to slowly destroy themselves, due to environmental concerns that may be out of control of the equipment owner.
They’re almost always deployed in controlled environments like DCs - not even enthusiast or prosumers need or benefit from them.
The power thing is either an anomaly, misconfiguration, or deliberately designed to avoid heat/cool stresses. Being powered on all the time isn’t always bad - it’s the stress of heating up and down suddenly when power is lost that often causes damage.
There was a spate of issues with early (~2010) POE switches where a port would randomly die when they were rebooted. Some of the power components would literally crack and shatter.
I commented on this video three years ago while working on LTO library diagnostics. Comment is still up. As far I can recall the issue here is the drive sled not the actual drive, it’s malfunctioning and needs to be replaced. This is not by design and is usually covered under warranty. Normally it only blasts at 100% during boot. I’ve worked with hundreds if not thousands of these.
I concur. I have the very same LTO changer (BDT FlexStor II changer labelled as Quantum Neo T24, also found under various brands such as Dell, IBM, etc) as in this video (and set up tons of them at customer's facilities). They don't constantly spin their fans this way.
Actually LTO tape drives (and tapes) are really tolerant to dust. Several of my customers have LTO changers in rooms where there was wall work and painting done, with tons of thick dust. The drives still work. Actually one of the changer failed, but that's the changer arm, not the drives.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 23.4 ms ] threadBut the drive system is sensitive to dust, and the solution is that you have to clean it with tape cleaning media. But even so the cleaning media is itself mildly abrasive and slowly wears down the drive heads until they no longer work.
... Here’s an idea, how about designing tape drives that turn themselves off, or go into an ultra low power idle state when they’re not doing anything, and don’t need cooling?
Or maybe design tape drive systems to have a HEPA micron particulate filter on the front of them to protect a stand-alone tape drive or robotic tape library from dust?
Yet oddly it seems absolutely no LTO manufacturer does this. It’s as if they are intentionally designing their products to slowly destroy themselves, due to environmental concerns that may be out of control of the equipment owner.
The power thing is either an anomaly, misconfiguration, or deliberately designed to avoid heat/cool stresses. Being powered on all the time isn’t always bad - it’s the stress of heating up and down suddenly when power is lost that often causes damage.
There was a spate of issues with early (~2010) POE switches where a port would randomly die when they were rebooted. Some of the power components would literally crack and shatter.