Tape wearing out on Exabyte?

[Grant Collins]

I have a brand new Exabyte with a brand new tape in it and everytime I do
a dump over the network to it it gives a message like:

st1: warning, the tape may be wearing out or the head may need cleaning.
st1: write retries= 13936, file= 0, block= 3448

I have seen this discussed a while ago but I cant recall the
cause/solution to the problem.  Any ideas?   When I restore the contents
to an unused partition all APPEARS OK.  Is there anyway to verify that
nothing has been corrupted or do I just cross my fingers and hope for the
best?  Any help much appreciated..