From: pww@bnr.ca (Peter Whittaker)
Subject: Complete scoop on cleaning Exabytes (Re: cleaning fluid for Exabytes)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd., Ottawa
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 14:07:32 GMT

In article <1992Oct7.191243.10336@zia.aoc.nrao.edu> rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner) writes:
>Has anyone tried these? Are they preferable to the usual Exabyte cleaning
>cartridges? Does the fluid soak the tape uniformly and thoroughly, or do you
>get gaps with dry tape? Any other implications?

Complete scoop:  proper maintenance of Exabyte drives requires regular
use of Exabyte cleaning kits and periodic "internal cleaning" using a
chemical solution.

Regular cleaning:  an Exabyte cleaning cartridge should be run through
an Exabyte drive at least once every 20-30GB transferred (that's read
or written);  this regular cleaning will remove any loose particulate,
dust, grunge, or cruft that may have accumulated on the read and write
heads.

Exabyte and other vendors sell several varieties of cleaning kits;
dollar for dollar, the best deal (as far as I know) is the Exabyte 12
pass.  The number of passes indicated is NOT a recommendation, it is a
hard limit:  if you insert a 3 pass cleaning kit a fourth time, NOTHING
WILL HAPPEN.

Exabute cleaning kits are basically cloth dusters.  Video cleaning kits
are very abrasive video tapes (all 8mm tape is abrasive, all 8mm tape
wears heads to some degree).  Use of the video cleaning will void most
warrantees and guarantee that your heads will need replacing long
before they should.

8mm drive heads *will* need replacing;  under normal duty cycle (as
described in the Exabyte manuals), they'll last about 4 years, but only
if maintained properly.  There are two reasons:  wear and tear (grit,
dust, crift, grunge, and garbage video tapes are contribute here), and
chemistry.  The chemistry occurs during normal use:  8mm and DAT
helical scan technlogies produce brutal operating environments in which
the tape heads are essentially buried in the tape;  the high
temperatures and relative speeds (8mm tape heads whip around at 1800
RPM, whilst buried in the tape) cause a chemical reaction between the
heads and the tape surface, bonding small amounts of tape stuff to the
heads.

This is were various noxious substances come in:  qualified service
personnel will open the drive and carefully clean the heads using the
noxious substance (we use a non-noxious substance, but the people who
can tell me what it is are away from their phones right now;  maybe
I'll post it later).  This removes a lot of the bonded gunk.  Internal
cleanign also give the QSP a chance to blow out any dust bunnies that
may have accumulated.  (NOTE:  certain reseller packaging techniques
are lacking in this area, what with internal fans setup to blow dust
over the heads!).

Summary:  use cleaning kits every week or two, and have an internal
cleaning performed every year.  Use certified cleaning kits, good tapes
(either DATA certified, or quality P6-120MP video tapes, i.e. SONY),
keep your drives off the floor, away from dusty rooms, etc.

pww

P.S. If people treated their cars (or their disks!) as badly as they
     treated their tape drives, they'd never get a chance to to
     depreciate 30% in the first year.