HP LTO Ultrium Media - Cleaning the Tape Heads on a Ultrium Drive

You must use only Ultrium cleaning cartridges to clean the tape heads. A cleaning cartridge is supplied with each tape drive.

Do not use swabs or other means of cleaning the heads. The cleaning cartridge uses a special tape to clean the tape heads.

An Ultrium universal cleaning cartridge can be used up to 50 times with HP StorageWorks Ultrium 960 and 460 tape drives and up to 15 times with HP StorageWorks Ultrium 230 and 215 tape drives. If the cartridge is ejected immediately then it has expired or it is not an Ultrium cleaning cartridge. Discard it and use a new one.

1. Insert an Ultrium universal cleaning cartridge into the drive. The tape drive automatically loads the cartridge and cleans the heads.
   During the cleaning cycle the orange 'Clean' (Ultrium 960 and 460) or 'Use Cleaning Cartridge' (Ultrium 230 and 215) LED will be on and the green 'Ready' LED will flash.
2. At the end of the cleaning cycle, the drive ejects the cartridge. The cleaning cycle can take up to 5 minutes. If the cleaning cartridge ejects immediately, it has expired or it is not an HP Ultrium cleaning cartridge. In this case, discard the cleaning cartridge and repeat the operation with a new one.
3. Remove the cleaning cartridge from the drive.
4. The drive's TapeAlert feature will send a message to your backup application when the tape heads need cleaning, or a cleaning cartridge has expired