HP SureStore DAT/24 (C1537A) - Will not load tapes.

[Kaile Riser]

Hello,

I recently started having a problem with my DAT drive... The clean light is slowly blinking, and I am not able to put a tape in the drive. I have of course tried to put in a cleaning tape, but it will not accept this tape either. There is nothing obstructing the drive, it simply will not load the tapes. I have shutdown the server and brought it back up twice now, with no change in status. I have not used the drive in a while, and there was not a tape in it for the period it was idle. Nothing has changed with my system configuration since the last time this drive functioned. This machine is running FreeBSD 4.9. I have tried installing the ltt tools, but they do not work under linux emulation (they run, but don't seem to see the scsi bus).

This tape drive is connected to an Adaptec 2940 card and is seen by the operating system:

ahc0: port 0xb000-0xb0ff mem 0xd8101000-0xd8101fff irq 9 at device 11.0 on pci0
aic7870: Single Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 16/253 SCBs
sa0 at ahc0 bus 0 target 6 lun 0
sa0: Removable Sequential Access SCSI-2 device
sa0: 10.000MB/s transfers (10.000MHz, offset 15)

Any information would be greatly appreciated, I would like to start testing some new backup software & scripts ASAP.

[Shaikh Imran]

Hi,
Check this Out
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00057819&locale=en_US#LED_6

I suppose you need to change the cleaning DAT and try.

Regards,

Imran Shaikh

[Kaile Riser]

Well, unfortunately, it will not accept a tape at all. I have tried several cleaning tapes as well as DDS3 tapes. When you put in the tape to the point it would normally be pulled into the drive, nothing at all happens.

Thanks for the pointers anyhow. I appreciate it.

[Shaikh Imran]

Ok,
Then finally it seems to be the problem with the eject Mechanism sensor of your tape drive.
Either you may have to get it repaired or repalce the DAT drive.

Reg,

[CA1129649]

I have seen the problem that you are experiencing with your tape drive. I am not sure what the technical terms of the process are, however, I think that I can walk you through fixing the drive. I have disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled about 5 drives recently and have had a similar problem. Please let me know if you still need assistance with this problem and I will be happy to help out.

Thanks,

Matt
mab@bdi-ae.com