DLT tape drive cleaning - how often?

I run my cleaning tape twice a week.  

You might as well sandpaper the head down as run a cleaning tape through it twice per week. If your drive doesn't have a "clean me" light then it will indicate the need for cleaning in other ways, e.g. by failing to backup or spitting tapes out. So I would clean it each time the backup fails. You can probably monitor the number of soft and hard errors with your backup software as well, if you have time to check the error count daily you'll soon notice any dodgy tapes or a progressive deterioration.

Oh, and a DLT cleaning tape has 30 inserts until it reaches the end if I remember correctly, so I wouldn't worry too much about wearing the drive out with it if you've only got one, you can't hurt the head by putting an expired cleaning tape in the drive, it'll just spit it straight out again.

If you have no indicator light then once every 2 months would be about right assuming you run 1 tape for your backup per day.

It's a Quantum Ultrium LTO2.  It only has lights for Power, Activity, Error, and Status.

Thanks,

Theo

Actually, there's no display area at all, just those 4 LED lights.

Thanks,

Theo

Maybe there is a light combo you need to look out for? all lights on for example? also does this device have a network port and maybe a web interface? where you could pull info from?

Not sure, I inherited this device, can't find the documentation anywhere.  

I'm just going to stick with once a month cleaning, and if backups start to fail, I'll do it then as well.

Thanks,

Theo