HP Surestore DAT24 power problem

[SAME]

We have noticed several times that our DAT24 surestore unit seems to power off by itself. This problem is present in one DAT24 drive in a Netserver E800 and another DAT24 drive in a Netserver E60 both running linux SuSE 7.1, but these units have been operative with no problems for more than a year.

No led and no eject button are operative until you reboot the server and no log messages are left.

We have tried to interchange the power cords but it still fails.

Any ideas? Is this a problem with the units or it's more likely to be a problem with the power supply?

Thank you very much in advance.

P.S. This thread has been moved from Disk to Tape Libraries and Drives. -HP Forum Moderator

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Hello Same,
looks like DAT drive goes to powersaving mode :-) just joking. This should not happen. What I would recommend is to check at which time this drive goes offline (for example, after 4 hours of normal work), then get it outside server and connect to known good power supply only (w/o SCSI connection) and check if it will do the same. If yes, I would suspect drive (or its firmware, try updating it with HP Library and Tape Tools available from www.hp.com), but if no then I would research Netserver PSU, SCSI bus (cable, termination, controller) or any program which can cause DAT to go to "uncounscious" state.
Do you know that DAT (DDS) drives should be cleaned every 20 tape pulling hour or after 5 full backups (usually after business week)?
Eugeny

[Alan Trundle · Accepted solution]

I had the same problem, all lights would just go out, and tape wouldn't eject, after reboot the drive came back to life for a bit.
I found a solution to my problem eventually and it goes like this..

1. Change the SCSI ID of the tape drive, making sure that it doesn't clash with the card's ID.

2. If you have an Adaptec SCSI controller, then reboot your server and hit Ctl+A, to enter the SCSI bios, then one of the option's should be to auto disconnect SCSI ID X, somewhere within the bios. Find the ID that your drive is assigned to and hit NO!. This should stop the drive from dropping off of the SCSI bus when the drive is inactive.

3. Swap over power connector with CDROM

4. Power server back up

If you still get problems then check termination and reseat of SCSI cables.

[Marino Meloni_1]

Another advice is to check in you backup logs if eveything terminate correctly, in fact some of the cause of this behaviour is that the backup do not terminate, and as the DAT os put in reserved mode, you cannot eject any cartridge, he only wait for a release of this mode. The HBA can then after some commands think that the DAT is "dead" and disconnect him from the SCSI channel. You need to reboot in order to let HBA take again in account the Unit.
I had some of this behaviour especialy when the tape is full, the BU SW ask for a new tape, but do never issue a rewind or a eject, so everything apear hang.