Abstract: A system, method and program product for freeing tape drives so that long running jobs on a computer can be paused when other applications need the drives and restarted when the drives are available again. This is accomplished by pausing and resuming applications running on a computer including accessing a tape drive, on which is mounted a first tape, by a first application running on the computer, the accessing being through a pause/resume handler; pausing the first application responsive to an operator intervention to the pause/resume handler; storing parameters in the computer including location parameters indicating where the tape drive paused; mounting a second tape on the tape drive; and accessing the tape drive by a second application running on the computer. After the second application has completed access to the tape drive, the second tape is removed from the tape drive, and the first tape is remounted.