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DAT40x6 drive termination

 
CA1023671
New Member

DAT40x6 drive termination

I'm having many problems getting a Surestore DAT40x6 to work under WinXP Pro with an adaptec 2940UW. I've never used a drive like this before. I downloaded LTT and drivers etc, but can't prove the drivers installed (right-clicked and chose "Install" and nothing happened or happened too quick to see). LTT seems to do any basics tasks I ask of it, but I haven't asked for too much besides load this tape, unload it, load that tape, etc, and run a performance test at different compression levels.

The install instructions for the driver for XP are flat-out WRONG- they refer to a control-panel applet TAPE DEVICES or something like that, and I didn't even have that applet in control panel. But now I do.

But let's start with basics; I can't even see the drive in the adaptec SCSI bios utilities if I have a terminator on the drive. I took the terminator off (with all power off) and turned it all back on. Hit control-A to get into SCSI bios and scanned the bus. Now it identifies the drive by its HP internal part number. C1537 or whatever-- don't recall.

I have all switches on bottom set to default setting, meaning switch 3 only on.

Some FAQ recommended using the SCSI bios option to set the SsCI card config to all defaults. Did that. Still acts squirrely. NT backup can't seem to do a backup to it. I still get "Waiting for previous media operation to complete..." and I can go away for several hours and return and it will be unchanged.

LTT still works ok.

Any ideas?
2 REPLIES 2
Lewis Finch
Honored Contributor

Re: DAT40x6 drive termination

Thomas,

To start with, make sure you have LUN support enabled in the SCSI BIOS. During POST you should see the drive banner followed by LUN 0 and LUN 1. You should always use a terminator with this drive. If you're having problems with that try a different one. Also if you have too long of a cable you will have problems. Is there anything else connected to this card that could be increasing cable length?
"You can't lead the orchestra without turning your back to the crowd"
CA1023671
New Member

Re: DAT40x6 drive termination

Ah-HA! I have it working now. Yes, I had LUN support turned on- but LUN support was pretty crude back in Adaptec SCSI bios version 1.2 something! I didn't realize how old it was. I had downloaded many drivers, tools, and firmware upgrades, the Adaptec among them. But I hadn't yet applied that one, because of dire warnings about attempting the upgrade on an OEM 2940UW; mine has a sticker on it that says "Gateway" but is apparently not an OEM version in any way that matters, because the flash BIOS upgrade process went off without a hitch. Well, one hitch. What do people do that unlike me don't still have a Win98 machine sitting around to create a bootable floppy? IF you can't create one, you can't do the flash upgrade, period.

Now I just need to learn how to use NTBackup and the removeable storage snap-in. Seems pretty obscure- I backed up my C drive and then my D drive and I can't tell if they went on separate tapes or continously on whatever free media was in the free media pool. I had put all six tapes in the changer in the free media pool.

It backed up 2,592,433,860 byte (2.4gb??) in 14 min 8 sec, verified in 9 minutes 49 sec.

It did my D drive, 19,282,042,838 bytes in 1 hour 56 min.

Is that reasonably fast?