HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
TurboSTORE/iX II Optical Enhancements
by Sue Coatney and Aurelio Gomez
Commercial Systems Division
PRODUCT OVERVIEW
Hewlett-Packard is proud to announce additional functionality for our
TurboSTORE/iX II with Optical Support (HP36397A and HP36398A) products.
Both of these products contain support for the Rewriteable Optical
Library System (C1700A). The new functionality includes:
* pre-erasure support, which almost doubles the backup performance
* the ability to load/unload specific pieces of media
These product enhancements provides a significant increase in backup
performance to the Optical Library System as well as improved media
handling functionality for your operations staff.
PRODUCT FEATURES
Both of these TurboSTORE/iX II with Support for Rewriteable Optical Disk
products include the following enhancements:
* increased backup performance
* enhanced user interface when adding and removing media from the
Optical Library System
* reduced time to synchronize software tables with the contents of
the Optical Library System
Increased Backup Performance
The technology of rewriteable media is a two step process. The first
pass erases the media, the second pass writes the data to the media. By
pre-erasing the media prior to the backup (during the initialization or
scratching process), a one step data writing process can be used during
backup. Using a one step write process during backup will yield a
significant backup performance improvement.
The Magneto-Optical Utility (MOUTIL) SCRATCH and INITMO commands have
been enhanced to pre-erase the optical media backup areas when preparing
the media for backup use. TurboSTORE/iX II has also been enhanced to
recognize the pre-erased optical media, and will issue a one pass write
command when storing data to the optical disks. If the media has not
been pre-erased, the slower two pass write method will be utilized.
Enhanced Media Handling
MOUTIL was also enhanced to provide easier loading and unloading of media
from the Optical Library System. In addition to the new LOAD/UNLOAD
functionality, MOUTIL secures any storage slots that are occupied with
media.
The new MOUTIL LOAD command unlocks the unit's mail slot so that users
can use the front panel to insert media into non-secured media storage
slots.
The new MOUTIL UNLOAD command allows users to remove media from secured
media storage slots. Using the UNLOAD command the user can specify which
media to unload by either the backup name or media storage slot number.
The UNLOAD command unlocks the mail slot and release the specified
media's storage slot so that users can remove the media through the front
panel.
Reduced SYNCTABLE Time
The SYNCTABLE command was also modified to take advantage of the secured
media storage slots. SYNCTABLE now only synchronizes the occupied media
storage slots that are unsecured. The previous synctable information for
secured slots is still valid, so SYNCTABLE will not redundently
synchronize secured media. This reduces the time needed to synchronize
the Optical Library System software tables.