IBM Mainframe Forum

Hello,
I am not sure if i am putting the topic under the right head......

My question is - Is there a way we can determine how many cylinders one TAPE can handle.
We are trying to determine the cylinders a tape will take when we unload the data to dasd.

Tape capacity varies from 200 megabytes to 60 gigabytes (or more), depending upon the drive type, compression capability, and tape characteristics. You first have to know the capacity of the tape. A 3390 track holds no more than 56664 bytes, so 15 times that gives you the cylinder maximum; if you are using half-track blocking you can assume 56000 bytes per track (or 55996 to be precise). Your best bet is to talk to your site support group about what is installed at your site.

thanks a lot for the quick reply. I would surely get to the storage people.
By any chance do you know the max bytes a cylinder can hold up.

gauravuppal11 wrote:... By any chance do you know the max bytes a cylinder can hold up.

Reread Mr. Sample's post carefully.