On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Frederick Bruckman wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Matthias Scheler wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 07:43:19AM -0400, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:
> > > I remember reading somewhere (possibly a FOAF story - I can't remember
> > > exactly) that tape cleaners were actually bad for tape drives.
> >
> > Vendors strongly recomment regular cleans at least for DAT streamers.
> > Several streames even report if the want to be cleaned by e.g. a LED
> > or SCSI messages.
>
> Yes, and when the Exabyte 82xx's counter says it's time to be cleaned,
> it won't operate until it's sees an Exabyte brand cleaner cartridge,
> which may well be the problem here. (It's diabolical!)

Not necessarily. Some clone tape cleaner carts abrade heads.