External Tape Drive Cleaning Required. This is an indication of whether the tape drive heads require a cleaning session to occur. If this variable indicates a need to clean the tape heads, then a cleaning tape will need to be inserted and run through a cleaning cycle. This variable can be in one of the following states: other(1) The tape drive does not support monitoring of the cleaning required status. true(2) The tape drive requires a cleaning tape session in order to clean the heads. false(3) The tape drive does not require any cleaning tape session.