ML350 G5 Intermittently Freezing during Backup With Quantum DLT-V4 SATA to USB

[Phil Vincent]

We have a Proliant ML350 G5 with a Quantum DLT-V4 drive attached. The DLT drive is SATA natively but comes with an adapter that allows it to be connected via USB. 90% of the time the drive operates without issue and backs up around 100GB a night. The other 10% of the time I get called at 6 a.m. from a user notifying me that the server is down. There will be no response from the server whatsoever and just a black screen with a white cursor on the console. The only option is to hold the power button in on the server and force a shut-down.

There is nothing in the event logs. I am pretty sure the server is locking-up during the backup (when it does happen it's always during a backup) and I am assuming that the issue is due to the DLT drive being connected via USB (the 1 free USB port on the mobo).

There are no free SATA ports on the server so I don't have a lot of workarounds. Anyone have a similar issue or workaround?

Thanks!