A Accommodating Non-Standard Label Formats

By default, the StorageTek SL150 Modular Tape Library System is configured to use the eight-character label format that is standard for Linear Tape Open (LTO) cartridges. While most backup and storage management applications support the standard LTO labeling format, a few use proprietary labeling schemes to track volumes. If you use such an application, you can, in most cases, configure the StorageTek SL150 Modular Tape Library System to automatically translate between the physical labels that are actually on your cartridges and the logical label format that the application uses internally.

Translating Between Physical and Logical Labels

To accommodate the fullest range of possible labeling schemes, the StorageTek SL150 Modular Tape Library System supports labels 8 to 14 characters long and provides a label windowing feature that lets you specify how labels should be interpreted when communicating with the host application.

So, for example, if the host application uses only a portion of the physical cartridge label to identify volumes, you can tell the library to construct a logical label using a subset of the characters, starting from the first column in the label and reading to the right. Alternatively, if the physical cartridge label is simply a string of characters that does not identify the media domain (LTO) and type (Gen-3, Gen-4, Gen-5), you can tell the library to skip domain and type checking and send all characters to the host without any further processing (you should not use this option, if your labels do include a domain and type).

The StorageTek SL150 user interface supports the following labeling options:

No type checking passes all characters in the label without modification and without checking the media domain and type. Use this option if your labels do not identify the media: M123456789AB does not, for example, contain a media descriptor, such as L5.
Prepend last two characters passes all the characters after moving the last two characters in the label to the front: KL10203012L5 is translated to L5KL10203012.
Full label passes the first eight characters in the physical label: KL10203012L5 is translated to KL102030.
Trim last character passes the first seven characters in the physical label: KL10203012L5 is translated to KL10203.
Trim last two characters passes the first six characters in the physical label: KL10203012L5 is translated to KL1020.
Trim first two characters passes the third through eighth characters in the physical label: KL10203012L5 is translated to 102030.
Trim first character passes the second through eighth characters in the physical label: KL10203012L5 is translated to L102030.

Managing Unidentifiable, Unsupported, or Missing Labels

If the physical label on a cartridge is missing, misapplied, damaged, or incorrectly formatted, the cartridge can be loaded and stored in the library. Since the library software cannot identify the cartridge, it marks the Tape Label field of the corresponding tape properties sheet [UNREADABLE].