We just replaced our 3592-E05s (plus our 3590-H1As) with 3592-E07s
(and a couple disk arrays for FILE pools).  I was also replacing our
3494 library with a pair of 3584s, which was the bigger change for me.

A quick brain-dump of -E07 things of note:

  * 3592-E07 can read 3592-JA media but not write it, and can read
    the old format and write the new format on -JB and -JC (for -E06)
    media as you describe (to be safe, I also relabeled my scratch
    tapes on the -E07s before checking them in, which was simple for
    me since I was moving scratch tapes to the new libraries)

  * Be sure your Atape/IBMtape driver supports the -E07 drives

  * Be sure your TSM server version supports the -E07 drives

  * Optionally update your devclass est/max capacity

  * I ran into intermittent errors on multiple drives that caused
    TSM to mark the drives offline (error number 5, various ops);
    installing the D3I3_6B0 engineering version of microcode (just
    released at the time) seemed to resolve that -- as always, only
    use engineering microcode at the direction of IBM support

  * I've seen occasional media errors on the reused tapes that had
    no errors in previous use -- perhaps the -E07s with their higher
    track density are more sensitive to media quality or flaws; I'm
    not retiring the affected tapes yet, just moving the data and
    keeping a watchful eye.

I've definitely noticed the increased performance of the -E07 drives
in addition to the higher capacity (also the faster mounts, and the
faster robotics in the 3584s).


Allen S. Rout wrote:
>
> Way back when, when I updated my 3592 drives, I seem to recall I was
> able to write the higher density format to the old tapes, once they went
> through a scratch cycle...  We just went through a long period in which
> space got ... easy. :)
>
> I'm contemplating updating from the E05s to the E07s now, and I want to
> double-check that this is the case at this transition, too.  Or am I
> insane and remembering incorrectly?
>
> Any war stories about drive hardware updates?


--
Hello World.                                David Bronder - Systems Architect
Segmentation Fault                                      ITS-EI, Univ. of Iowa
Core dumped, disk trashed, quota filled, soda warm.   david-bronder AT uiowa 
DOT edu