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+# LTO9 Optimizer
+
+This is a simple bash script to initialize/optimize LTO9 physical tapes.
+
+## The problem
+
+Enterprise LTO9 tapes are cool, but if you buy them in stocks of 1,000, or even 2,000, you potentially need [weeks](https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/ts4500-tape-library?topic=drives-media-optimization) before using them.
+A single tape is held from 20 minutes up to 2 hours in the drive.
+
+I find unnerving that enterprise tape libraries are sold without a feature to do this automatically, so I wrote this simple bash script.
+
+## The solution
+
+Connect the Tape Library to a Linux server using SAS or FiberChannel (I only have tested FC), then run `lsscsi -g | grep medium` to get the special device of the changer, which will be something like `/dev/sgX`.
+
+Then you can run the command:
+
+`optimizer.sh </dev/sgX> <parallelism>`
+
+Where 'parallelism' is a number, which can be equal to the number of the drives of the library/partition.
+
+The script takes **long** pauses to avoid too many load/unload commands, so... be patient.
+
+It has been tested with both:
+- IBM TS4500 Tape Library
+- Quantum i6000 Tape Library
+
+## Fun facts
+
+Up today, 4th of July, 2023, none of the major brands of Tape Libraries could provide a tool capable of this. I wrote the script in a day, then tested and fixed it.
+
+Total time spent: 3 days.
+Total money earned: none, so I'll just put it here.