You do not have to clean optical media devices as often as tape drives. You must clean your tape units on a regular basis. The read-write heads collect dust and other material that can cause errors when reading or writing to tape. In addition, you should also clean the tape unit if you are going to use it for an extended period of time or if you use new tapes. New tapes tend to collect more material on the read-write heads of the tape unit. For more specific recommendations, refer to the manual for the specific tape unit that you are using.
Initialize your tapes with the Initialize Tape (INZTAP) command or the Format tape function available in iSeries™ Navigator. Initialize your optical media with the Initialize Optical (INZOPT) command. These commands prepare your media, and the commands can physically erase all data on the media with the CLEAR parameter.
For tapes, you can specify the format (or density in bits per inch) before you write to tape. Do this by using parameters on the INZTAP command when you initialize the tape.
You can specify the format of your optical media. Several optical media types require a particular format. For erasable media, which allows a choice of format, you should use the *UDF format if you use the optical media for backup and recovery purposes.
You can use option 21 (Prepare tapes) on the GO BACKUP menu. This provides a simple method of initializing your media with a naming convention like the ones in Name and label media.