| • | Both LTO tapes and 3592 tapes can be partitioned. |
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LTO tapes are always partitioned wrap-wise. |
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Tape with 4 wrap-wise partitions
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Wrap-wise partitioned tapes can have 2 or 4 partitions.
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The main reason for partitioning tapes: LTFS |
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Partitioning of tapes has been available for some time, but was has never been used extensively. This changed with widespread acceptance of LTFS.
LTFS requires two partitions: A small partition for the directory and a larger partition for the data. All tapes formatted for LTFS have at least 2 partitions.
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| • | 3592 tapes can additionally be partitioned longitudinally |
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Longitudinally partitioned tape
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Longitudinal partitioning is provided for better random access performance. Frequently accessed records are stored in the first, shorter partition. Random access to these records is improved, since only a short distance of the tape has to be traversed.
When the first partition is filled, writing overflows to the second partition.
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VeriTape shows the partitions and their sizes |
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This tape has 2 partitions:
A small partition with a capacity of 3% and a large partition with a size equal to 95% of the tape.
Note that the capacities don't add up to 100%. This is due to guard warps between the partitions.
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Why reduce the capacity of a tape? |
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Reducing the capacity of a tape can increase the performance. Most tapes are used to archive data and are nearly written to capacity. For these tapes reducing the capacity is not desirable.
Some tapes are never written to capacity. These tapes can benefit from excluding their unused section from access.
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Regular tape
Tape written to about 30% capacity.
The entire length of the tape is used and 30% of the width.
Access to a record may require traversing the entire length of the tape. |
Reduced capacity tape
Tape with capacity reduced to 30%.
Only the first 30% of the tape length is used.
Access to records is imroved.
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VeriTape shows whether the tape capacity is reduced. |
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3592 VeriTape shows file protected cartridges |
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3592 Tapes support two types of logical file protection that can be managed with SCSI commands:
"Persistent" write protect can be set and cleared.
"Permanent" write protect can only be set. Once set, it cannot be cleared except by our eraser. Find out more about our eraser
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3592 VeriTape shows the recording format |
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3592 tapes can be written in several formats. In addition to showing the cartridge type, VeriTape also shows the recording format.
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