Patent ID: 7809990

Claim:
A monitoring apparatus that monitors a storage device that writes data in or reads data from a storage medium, wherein the storage medium and a memory that stores therein information pertaining to data read from or written to the storage medium by the storage device are included in a cartridge, comprising: an information reading unit that reads the information from the memory; and a determining unit that determines whether the storage device needs maintenance or replacement based on the information read by the information reading unit, wherein the determining unit determines that the storage device needs maintenance or replacement when a value of an error rate exceeds a threshold value, the error rate being calculated based on the information read by the information reading unit, and the value of the error rate is calculated by dividing a cumulative read/write retry count by a cumulative read/write data amount, the cumulative read/write retry count being a cumulative retry count of a failed reading from or failed writing to the storage medium and the cumulative read/write data amount being a cumulative data amount that is read from or written to the storage medium.