HP T20 not responding

[Luc Gagnier]

Hi everybody,

I've a HP Surestore T20 Tape backup and it did'nt respond ("Error 534: Device is not yet ready" in TapeWare). It was working fine since 5 month ago but now nothing. The last backup log I have is'nt complete and I receive an error in event viewer than the device did'nt respond within the timeout period.

Thank you!

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
I do not want to bother you, but have you checked the cables and the power connector to the tape device ?
These are usually messages, when a cable is loose or a SCSI connection is not ok.
Could you attach the piece from the ventlog ?
That would help a bit.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Luc Gagnier]

Sorry but I've already checked power connector and SCSI cable. It wasn't the problem... But for the "ventlog" I don't know what you mean...

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi Luc.
I meant the eventlog. Is it connected to a Unixserver or a Windows machine ?
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Luc Gagnier]

Hi Alexander,

It's connected to a Windows NT 4.0 Server. In the eventlog, I've receive a message from the SCSI card driver (aic78xx.sys) : Event ID 9, The device/scsiport1 didn't respond within the timeout period.

Luc Gagnier

[Michele Winters]

Hi Luc,

Was this problem ever resolved and how? I am having the same issue. I have had successful backups for 2 years, using a HP Surestore T20i and Backup Exec for Windows NT V. 7.3 on a Windows NT machine. All of a sudden my backups have started to fail. However, the backups do not fail consistently. I have tried new media, retensioned the tapes 4 times before the backup, rebooted the server, and ran the diagnostic tools provided by HP. According to it, all tests pass sucessfully, but I'm still receiving failed backups with the the event id 9 and 11, source aic78xx, "the device, \device\scsiport1, did not respond within the timeout period." I haven't changed anything on the server nor has it been moved from its original location.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Marino Meloni_1]

hi
two thing:
--1 check scsi configuraation: disable wide negotiation and put transfer rate to 5 mb/s
--2 check the scsi driver, should be HP , file is aic78xx.sys in driver sirectory, the dimention has to be 66Kb or more, if you found a dimention of 26 Kb, than you have the Microsoft native one, (may be replaced after a service pack).
here is the kink for new driver
http://www.hp.com/cposupport/servers/software/uwdrv.exe.html
bye
marino

[Michele Winters]

Thank you, Marino, for your suggestions.
Troubleshooting this tape drive issue included checking all cables, running the HP diagnostic tool, which was successful in every attempt, purchasing new backup tapes since the ones I was using was 2+ years old, rentensioning tapes 3-5 times, disabling wide negotiation and placing the transfer rate at 5 mb/s, and running a Windows NT backup rather than a Veritas backup to insure it wasn't software related. Finally, after speaking with HP tech support, they suggested the HP onboard SCSI controller was perhaps bad and recommended that I purchase a new one. Also, they said that apparently after 1 year to 18 months something goes wrong with the SCSI controller and it won't work any longer with T20i drives. For our HP Netserver E60, we purchased an Adaptec 2940 SCSI controller, installed it, updated the driver with one from Adaptec's website, and disabled wide negotiation.
Since installing the new scsi controller, we have had 18 consecutive (successful) backups.
I hope this information can be useful for others in the future.
-Michele