12/24 DAT Library not on line

[Mark Fitch]

A customer has a DAT external library installed on a Compaq Proliant 5500, Compaq controller SM221. Purchased 5/2000. Have had continual problems with the library being offline, and failing to backup. Compaq has replaced controller and riser boards, HP has replaced the library, cables also replaced. It works for 6 months or so, then it fails. Any ideas? All products are still in warranty. Also Veritas has not been able to help. thanks, Mark

[Ted Ellis_2]

we do not work with a DAT library, but I have 10 servers all with DAT drives and almost without fail I will have at least one fail every 3-6 months. The drives are just not as hardy as the DLT standard. Any chance that a drive failure is somehow taking the library off-line? I would think that the library would handle that, but my SureStore LTO library had some firmware issues where about once a week a reported I/O error would scramble the brains of the library. We had a complete fix by upgrading drive and library firmware. I do not see any mention of firmware, but would think that before replacing all of the hardware they would verify and upgrade this..... just some thoughts

Ted

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,
Have you checked the drive when backup is running, does it start and stop or does it run continuous (streaming). DAT drives seems to be sensitive to this, for some years ago we had big problems with our DAT drives because we could not keep them streaming.

[Mark Fitch]

HP is again going to replace the library. thanks for the comments.