Magnetic tape apparatus, control method therefor, and magnetic tape apparatus control program

A method for controlling an operation of a magnetic tape apparatus including a plurality of magnetic tape drives, and a control unit for reading and writing information from/in the magnetic tape drives by a command from a host computer to read/duplicated data stored in the plurality of magnetic tape drives from the magnetic tape drives, comprising the steps of:

• A. the control unit, when the reading duplicated data from one magnetic tape drive is completed, performs positioning such that a read position of another magnetic tape drive in which the same data is stored is advanced by a length corresponding to an amount of data read from one magnetic tape drive and
• B. the control unit continues read of data from the other magnetic tape drive when data is unsuccessfully read from one magnetic tape drive.

A method for controlling an operation of a magnetic tape apparatus including a master magnetic tape drive, a slave magnetic tape drive, and a control unit for reading and writing information from/in the magnetic tape drives by a command from a host computer, the control unit including means for storing the same data in the magnetic tape drives while duplicating the data, to read the duplicated data stored in the magnetic tape drives, comprising the steps of:

• A. the control unit, when the reading duplicated data from the master magnetic tape drive is completed by one block, performs positioning such that a read position of the slave magnetic tape drive is advanced by one block;
• and
• B. the control unit continues read of data from the slave magnetic tape drive when data is unsuccessfully read from the master magnetic tape drive.

A method for controlling an operation of a magnetic tape apparatus including a plurality of magnetic tape drives, and a control unit for reading and writing information from/in the magnetic tape drives by a command from a host computer to read duplicated data stored in the plurality of magnetic tape drives, comprising the steps of:

• K. a positioning function held by the control unit, when the reading duplicated data from one data buffer of a plurality of data buffers is completed, performs positioning such that a read position of another data buffer in which the same data is stored is advanced by a length corresponding to an amount of data read from one data buffer, and including a plurality of data buffers, for reading the duplicated data from the magnetic tape drives, corresponding to the magnetic tape drives in which the data are temporarily stored;
• and
• L. continuing read of data from the other magnetic tape drive when a read continuing function held by the control unit unsuccessfully reads data from one data buffer.