These HP C5709A DDS cleaning tapes are essential if you want to keep your tape drive performing at its best. Even though all DDS drives have a self-cleaning mechanism, these cannot cope with the amount of dirt that settles on your drive’s read/write heads. Thus from time to time the cleaning lamp/light/LED of your tape drive will light up indicating that a cleaning tape such as the HP C5709A DDS cleaning cartridge is required. To use the HP C5709A cleaning tape: simply insert the cartridge into the tape drive and wait till it is ejected automatically. Do not rewind and reuse the C5709A cleaning tape, use a new one. It is recommended that you use a cleaning tape (such as the C5709A) whenever the cleaning lamp/light/LED lights up or on a regular basis.