User's Manual

Drive Operation and Maintenance 25
Forcing an eject
If you press the Eject button when the tape drive is busy, the tape drive first
completes the current task before responding to the eject request. This way no data
is lost.
However, in extreme cases, you may need to force an eject to unload a cartridge,
even at the risk of losing the data on the cartridge. A forced eject should
only be tried
when there is no other way to recover a cartridge.
Caution. If you force an eject, the cartridge may become unreadable and may
require erasing or re-initializing by the application software.
You can also force an eject when you need to eject the magazine and there is no
cartridge loaded in the drive. If you force an eject when a cartridge is not loaded, the
autoloader waits 35 seconds, ejects the magazine, and then resets as though it had
been turned off and then turned on.
To force an eject, hold down the Eject button for at least five seconds, then release
the button. When you force an eject, the following occurs:
If there is a tape in the drive, the Status Panel displays the message “UNLOAD
TAPE X” (where X is the number of the magazine slot which held the tape currently
in the drive). After the tape has been returned to the magazine, the display changes
to “EJECTING MAGAZINE” and the magazine is ejected.
Note. Because forcing an eject can interrupt an operation, the tape drive might not
write the end of data (EOD) mark on the tape before the cartridge is ejected.
If the EOD mark is not written on the tape, the tape might be formatted
incorrectly and the data on the tape might be lost. However, the data can
usually be read up to the point where the error occurred, if a tape is correctly
formatted.
If forcing an eject does not successfully remove a cartridge or the magazine, contact
Seagate technical support.
Automatic and manual cartridge loading
After cartridges have been loaded into the magazine and the magazine has been
inserted into the magazine bay, the autoloader can be left indefinitely for unattended
write or read operations.
To load a tape manually, press the SELECT button to select the desired tape slot,
then press the ENTER button.