Considerable effort, we operate to ensure the readability of tapes after perhaps years of storage without use. Even without the use of the tapes are subject to an aging process (physical deterioration) that can eventually cause serious problems or a complete failure
First, we have installed a monitor that continuously records the diagnosis of the drives that would normally be done for maintenance purposes. We capture and evaluate this information automated. We even get information about any problems that were never reported because of irrelevance to the server as an error. However, we can use this information to assess the quality of the tapes and impending problems early on.
According to our threshold values an alarm is set so that we can assess the problem and take any appropriate action.
The problem of assessing the quality of used tapes not long now we have achieved in that we read such tapes for automated sample, without a care for the information contained therein.
If an aging or wear and tear has affected the quality of the tape, recognize our special monitoring this and alerted us. We then decide to manually determine whether to grant further observation or a proactive copying the tape to a new one.