DLT VS80 Rejects ALL Catridges

[Douglas McClelland]

I have an internal VS80 DLT tape drive on my PC server running Windows NT4.0 Server. Any catridges, new, previously used or cleaning tapes are rejected. When I load the tape the drive opens the catridge, waits for about 2 seconds, the 'READY' light flashes twice and the catridge is ejected.

The drive was working fine until a few days ago.

Remedial action taken:
- Server has been shutdown, powered off and restarted - no change
- Drive has been reset by pressing the eject button for 6 or 7 seconds - no change
- I have loaded the latest HP L&TT tape software tools and upgraded the firmware to version V064 - no change
- I have performed all tests that do not require the reading or writing of a tape and the drive has passed all tests.

Test results file is attached. Any ideas?

[Arend Lensen]

Douglas,

Can you please create a support ticket and post it here. The log now posted is a LTT event/resultlog and not usefull at this stage where no media can be written.

Kind regards,
Arend

[Douglas McClelland]

Here is the requested support ticket.

Doug.

[Arend Lensen · Accepted solution]

Doug,

The drive is reported read errors and cleaning requests. The nvram can only contain a maximum of 15 events but i can see that it had over 150 events, i can only see that last 15 and assume that the others were similair.
If it does not accept a cleaning tape then there's not much you can do, sorry.
The drive has been powered-on for 28420 hours now, thats is 3 years and 4 months.
I think you need a new drive.

best regards,
Arend

[Douglas McClelland]

Thanks Arend, that is the conclusion I came to. Only 4 months out of warranty too!

Doug.