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HP 7979A/S,7980A/S,7980XC/SX,88780A/B

 
Nsikan_2
Occasional Advisor

HP 7979A/S,7980A/S,7980XC/SX,88780A/B

Hi all,
My customer has a magnetic tape drive that displays the following error on the HP unix server console/x-window when trying to access the device:
Error reading tape,I/O error.

Please how can I resolve this.I need this as soon as possible pls.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Regards.
Nsikan.
2 REPLIES 2
Eugeny Brychkov
Honored Contributor

Re: HP 7979A/S,7980A/S,7980XC/SX,88780A/B

Nsikan,
try diagnosing your drive with HP LTT http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/ltt/index.html . Generate support ticket for it and review this ticket.
Those drives in the subject look for me like DDS1 drives... did you think to upgrade? It's possible that old drives are already out-of-order :(
Eugeny
Vincent Farrugia
Honored Contributor

Re: HP 7979A/S,7980A/S,7980XC/SX,88780A/B

Hello,

Eugeny, those drives are very very old, certainly not DDS1 drives :-) They take reels on magnetic tapes and can only hold Mbs of data. I am sure that LTT is not supported with such drives.

Nsikan, like any IO error, with tape drives, it's always the same: either a bad tape drive, bad termination, bad cable, bad SCSI HBA...

I would suggest you clean the head first. In such old tape drives, the heads are very big and used to be cleaned. I don't know how they used to clean them, certainly with a cloth immersed in some liquid, maybe ethanol, but I'm not sure. What I'm sure is that that was the method for cleaning the heads. If it stays the same, check the cables for loose connection, check terminator, try to replace HBA and see what happens.

These drives are old, slow, but, because of that, very very reliable. We still have customers using them as well. They can be a pain but they're lovely. Good luck :-)

HTH,
Vince
Tape Drives RULE!!!