HP C1537A Tape Drive Problem

[Paul Barnard_1]

Hi,

I am having difficulty using 12G capacity tapes on my HP C1537A tape drive, although tapes with capacities of 1, 2 and 4G all work fine.

The backup software used is Veritas Backup Exec Desktop 4.5 running on a PC with Windows XP Home Edition. The jumpers on the bak of the drive are set correctly according to the manual, the SCSI card is an Adaptec 21960 Ultra160.

Has anyone else had a similar problem?

Paul B

[Steve W]

The drive is DDS3 and therefore knows about DDS1,2 and 3 media, but 12GB tapes are DDS4 only and therefore the drive doesn't know what it is.

[CA843380]

Hi,

The previous poster is misinformed. 12GB tapes are in fact DDS3. DDS4 tapes have a native capacity of 20GB. Ifyou are truly using 12GB tapes then the drive should accept these.
What brand of tapes are you using? HP brand labelled as DDS1,2,3,4 and only quotes compressed capacity, rather than native.

Can you describe your issue a little more please. What sort of errors are you getting?
Downloading LTT from
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?pnameOID=18636&locale=en_US&taskId=135&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=42846

and running some diagnostics and generating a support ticket and posting it here might help as well

Cheers,

Dave Dewar.

[Lewis Finch]

Hi Paul, From within Library and Tape tools, choose Utilities/Run Script. Then choose Browse and locate ddswriterecal.ssc. Run rhis recalibration script to see if that helps.

[CA843380]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the support ticket. The 84 and 85 errors indicate the drive is having problems writing, the F4 entries actually refer to cleaning tape events which do not appear to have made a difference so I doubt that the issues you are having are due to media debris and head clogs. The EE error is a track cal failure.

I would agree with Lewis that running the writecal script is your best bet here as your drive is having problems writing.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar.

[Paul Barnard_1]

Right guys, I've tried running the re-cal script a number of times to no avail. What's the next step? Repair?

Paul B

[CA843380]

Hi Paul,

It is looking like a repair might be necessary. One last thing I would like you to try though to confirm it is a writing issue.

LTT gives you an option to perform a write/read test. Hit the test menu option, select the C1537A from the list and select the read/write test from the test group. Load a DDS3 (12GB) tape. The test will try to write 60MB to the tape and read it back, should take about 5 mins max. When the test is complete, either pass or fail, go to the test results tab and turn on "everything" detail and post the results you see, particularly any error codes and the contents of the write and read frame error counters.

Repairing the drive might be quite expensive.
I guess you don't know how the history of the drive and so don't knwo when it was purchased. If it is younger than three years then it might be in warranty.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar

[Paul Barnard_1]

Dave, I did as you suggested, here are the results:

Test 'Read/Write Test' started on device 'HP C1537A' at address '3/0.1.0'
Failed
Operations Log
Performing Device Self Test
Performing 1st write phase of read/write test
Drive reported unrecovered I/O error condition, test phase cannot proceed
Bit error rate of write channel exceed limit, test will attempt to diagnose problem ((Current: 7.57e-001, Limit: 5.00e-001)
Performing drive cleaning during read/write test
Performing 2nd write phase of read/write test (re-test after drive cleaning)
Drive reported unrecovered I/O error condition, test phase cannot proceed
Performing 3rd write phase of read/write test (re-test on alternate cartridge)
Drive reported unrecovered I/O error condition, test phase cannot proceed
Test failed

This is the gist of it, there doesn't seem to be any easy way of getting this data out of the software other than many copy-pastes!

I'm no tape drive expert, but the results don't sound good.

Cheers,

Paul

[CA843380]

Hi Paul,

No the results are not good. You definitely have a write problem. To exceed the error rate limit of 5x10-1 is pretty serious. Since cleaning and recalibrating has not helped I think repair is your only option.
It could be that you have very bad head clogging that is not removed by cleaning tape.

Popping the lid off the drive and swabbing the heads with a cotton bud dipped in IPA can help here. However, this can also cause more damage as well so great care is needed.
The magnetic heads are located within the silver drum assembly, within the four windows, two write heads, and two read heads. This might be worth a try since you have nothing to lose :-0, you choice. Rerun the write/read test afterwards to see if you get any improvement.

If you drive is out of warranty then HP don't offer that service and so you are left with 3rd party repair. There are many companies that offer such services, a search on google will provide a list.
Maybe someone else can give you a recommendation of a company.

Good Luck,

Dave Dewar.