AIT tape drives come with a self-cleaning mechanism that prevents the necessity for frequent cleaning, however you still have to clean your tape drive once a week or fortnight at least for people who backup their data very frequently. However for regular users, we recommend cleaning your drives when the cleaning light or LED or lamp lights up. We provide HP and Sony cartridges for drives that use AIT2, AIT-3, AIT-4 and AIT5 tapes