DDS 12/24i Performance

[Robert Carmack]

I run a 20 tape rotation backing up mon - fri. evenings. The tapes are HP DDS3 and not even a month old. However the HP 12/24i is approx. 3 years old running this backup routine. I think it might just be wore out. Here's what is happening.

My DDS 12/24i Clean light blinking. Ran a cleaning tape light stops blinking. Next morning after a backup Clean light blinking again. Run tape cleaner again, light stops blinking. Next morning backup is still running. Checked Arcserve Manager and the backup has been running for over seven hours and is not even halfway finished. Normal nightly backup finishes on average 1h45m. I run a brand new cleaning tape five times back to back as per HP instructions. Next morning backup finished in proper time, but Clean light blinking again. Run cleaning tape again, blinking stops. Next morning backup is still running and not even halfway finished. Any advice?

[harry d brown jr]

If it's under HP maintenance have them come and inspect it, maybe they'll replace it.

If you have the need for speed look into LTO's.

live free or die
harry

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Looking to your symptom it seem drive is dying. Did you clean it after every 5 full backups or 20 tape pulling hours? You should keep track of cleaning, when drive starts flashing 'I want to be cleaned' it is usually too late.
Perfomance problems drive is experiencing is a consequence of drive getting errors / constantly issuing error correction and internal cleaning routine
Eugeny

[Robert Carmack]

Update: I tried using a new cleaning tape and tapes with no success. Seems problem has gotten worse through the day as I experimented to narrow down the problem. Did notice that halfway through a backup routine both Tape and Clean lights are blinking rapidly and performance comes to a crawl. This has happened about four times in a row. Finally gave up on the unit and installed spare DAT40i that I was saving for another project. Completed backup of entire server in record time, no glitches. My guess is drive has come to end of life or due to me not using the cleaning tape enough.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Robert,
one more thing you can try: install HP LTT from http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg50128.html , run tests on drive. LTT may ask to run scripts for drive (for example, calibration script) and after it drive may recover
Eugeny

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

When drives request cleaning very often, most probably it means the heads are wored out too much, which means that a replacement drive needs to be installed.

HTH,
Vince