Drive Properties

General

The general information about the drive, including the drive type, manufacturer, SCSI ID and firmware version, MediaAgent and library controlling the drive and a list of compatible media formats that can be used in the drive are displayed.

If necessary you can use the description field to record additional information about the Drive.

Status

• Status

  You can view the current status of the drive, including the drive online/offline, broken and cleaning status.

  You can use the Enable Drive option to logically enable or disable the drive in the CommCell.

  The drive status is displayed as Offline in situations in which a job cannot access the drive. In addition the Offline Reason drive indicates the appropriate reason.

• Cleaning

  You can view information on whether the drive requires cleaning and the last clean time, if applicable.

• Maintenance

  Mark Drive Offline for Maintenance

  You can enable this option when you wish to perform routine or other maintenance tasks on devices. This option is available in the MediaAgent, Library and Drive levels and you can appropriately enable them where needed.

  Data protection, data recovery and auxiliary copy operations will not use the associated MediaAgent/Library/Drive, depending on where the option is enabled. However, other administrative tasks on the devices such as Full Scan, Drive Cleaning, Verify Media etc. can be performed, if required.

  When this option is enabled, the system will automatically select an alternate resource (MediaAgent/Library/Drive) if Alternate Data Paths (GridStor) is enabled. If alternate resources are not available, data protection, data recovery and auxiliary copy will remain in the Waiting state in the Job Controller and will automatically resume when you re-enable the appropriate MediaAgent/Library/Drive.

• Read Only Mode

  Mark Drive as Read Only Mode

  You can enable this option when you wish to exclusively reserve a drive for data recovery operations. When this option is enabled the system will automatically select an alternate drive for write operations. If an alternate drive is not available the write operations (e.g., data protection, auxiliary copy, etc.) will remain in the Waiting state in the Job Controller and will automatically resume when you re-enable the appropriate drives.

• Active Drive Controller

  This option is useful to determine whether the drive controller in a specific MediaAgent is active or not.

Drive Controller

The Drive Controller tab is useful to determine whether the drive controller in a specific MediaAgent is active or not.

In a SAN environment, where multiple MediaAgents share the drives in a library using Dynamic Drive Sharing (DDS), the information in the drive controller tab can be used to identify all the MediaAgents that share a drive. If necessary the drive controller from a specific MediaAgent can be marked as disabled, if there is a problem using the drive from a specific MediaAgent.

Odometers

To ensure that drives are cleaned and replaced when necessary, the system keeps track of various types of drive events. For each drive, the system tracks the number of times each event occurs. When the number of events exceeds the preset maintenance threshold, e status of the drive is displayed as Offline and a suitable message is displayed in the Event Viewer, notifying you that the drive requires cleaning or replacement. In addition, the Threshold Exceeded Alert is generated, if configured. For information on setting the drive maintenance parameters, see Drive Maintenance Threshold Parameters.

Hardware Info

The hardware information tab displays the compatible media types that can be used on the drive and the drive throughput information.

Job Information

The Job Information tab is displayed in the Drive Properties dialog box when a job is active in the drive. The job information provides details and status information associated with the operation in the drive.