Product manual

54 Viper 200 LTO Product Manual
Cartridge memory
To maximize data access speed and efficiency, every LTO cartridge contains a
Cartridge Memory (CM) chip, which communicates with the drive via a contactless
radio-frequency link. The cartridge has 4 Kbytes of memory: 3 Kbytes are used to
store tape directory and hardware specific information and 1 Kbyte is available for
application and OEM use.
The cartridge memory is powered, read, and written to via radio-frequency link (non-
contact).
The drive will not write to a cartridge whose CM is faulty or whose CM (or manual
switch) is set to write protect.
The information stored in the CM includes the following:
• Cartridge type
• Unique cartridge serial number
• Cartridge manufacturer
• Date of manufacture
• Tape length
• Information about the last drive to initialize the tape
• Information about the last drive to write to the tape
• Tape Alert Flags that are set each time the cartridge is unloaded from the drive
• A count of the total number of times that the cartridge has been loaded
• A count of the total number of data sets written to this tape
• A count of the total number of write errors (recovered and unrecovered)
• A count of the total number of read errors (recovered and unrecovered)
• A count of the total number of write passes
Figure 26 shows the internal location of the Cartridge Memory and the Write-protect
switch.
Write-protect
switch
Cartridge
memory
chip
Front
Figure 26. LTO cartridge showing cartridge memory and write-protect switch