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Re: Latest Firmware for Ultrium 460?

 
Ronald W. Satz
Advisor

Latest Firmware for Ultrium 460?

David:

I forgot to mention that the HPDiagnostics says that the firmware revision for my Ultrium 460 is F79V/OEM19. Is this the latest? It's hard to tell from the driver page.

Regards,
RWS
transpower@aol.com
12 REPLIES 12

Re: Latest Firmware for Ultrium 460?

F79V/OEM19 is not a valid fimrware version.

F78V/OEM18 is the current firmware version for the Ultrium 460 drive in the 1/8 autoloader.

If you have a standalone drive, the current firmware version is F48D/OEM9
I work for HPE.
[Any personal opinions expressed are mine, and not official statements on behalf of Hewlett Packard Enterprise]
Ronald W. Satz
Advisor

Re: Latest Firmware for Ultrium 460?

Attached is a PDF of the HPDiagnostics screen. I have a stand-alone tape drive. The PDF clearly shows a firmware revision of F79V/OEM19. Has my leasing company taken a drive out of an autoloader and placed it in an external drive case? I notice that the power button is now in the rear, rather than the front; is that a tell-tale sign of something wrong? Anyway, if this drive is part of an autoloader, would the above firmware revision number be the latest?

Regards,
RWS
transpower@aol.com

Re: Latest Firmware for Ultrium 460?

I should have stated my message better. The F79V/OEM19 firmware should not be in a HP Branded drive.

Do you have an HP StorageWorks branded drive?

For your standalone drive you should have FXXX/OEM9 as the firmware version. The current version is F48D/OEM9

If you had an 1/8 autoloader, the current firmware would be F78V/OEM18.

As for the power switch:

External drives have the power switch on the front panel.

Internal drives are powered on when you switch on your computer.

Removable drives are powered on when you switch on your tape array and computer.





I work for HPE.
[Any personal opinions expressed are mine, and not official statements on behalf of Hewlett Packard Enterprise]
Ronald W. Satz
Advisor

Re: Latest Firmware for Ultrium 460?

Bryce:

> Do you have an HP StorageWorks branded >drive?

Well, I should hope so. HPTapeDiagnostics found it alright. The front of the drive says "hp StorageWorks Ultrium 460."

I'm going to download the other firmware to see if it makes a difference.

Regards,
RWS
transpower@aol.com


Re: Latest Firmware for Ultrium 460?

Ronald,
You will not be able to change the firmware to another OEM variant. HP L&TT will not match any firmware verison with your firmware variant, nor would the drive accept a different firmware variant. Since it looks like you have a drive with incorrect firmware, I suggest you contact HP Support to get furhter assistance.
I work for HPE.
[Any personal opinions expressed are mine, and not official statements on behalf of Hewlett Packard Enterprise]
Ronald W. Satz
Advisor

Re: Latest Firmware for Ultrium 460?

Bryce:

I tried downloading several different firmware files. HPTapeDiagnostics says they're all the "wrong personality", as shown on the attached PDF file.

So I will now contact HP support.

Regards,
RWS
transpower@aol.com
Ronald W. Satz
Advisor

Re: Latest Firmware for Ultrium 460?

The HP support technician will check with my leasing company to get more information on the specific model of the Ultrium 460 I have.

In the meantime I downloaded the latest version of the HP LTT and ran the System Performance Test. The result: only 2 MB/sec. The LaCie/Maxtor HD is rated at 60 MB/sec. I have the AHA-39320, which is rated at 320 MB/sec. So there's a bottleneck somewhere. Where?

I next ran the LTO Acceptance Test. No problems.

I then did an actual backup of all three logical drives (C, D, E) using NTBackup and got an average speed of only 152 MB/min (although this is better than what I got a few days ago). C-drive got 237 MB/min, D-drive only 96 MB/min, and E-drive got 128 MB/min. System state was done at 189 MB/min. All drives were chkdsk'd before the backup--no problems reported at all. Also all drives were defragmented and are "healthy."

I have the Ultra320 set to 320 for all drives. Is this in error? I noticed that during the backup the HD seemed to be working a lot harder than the tape drive; i.e., the tape drive light was not flashing constantly, just periodically.

Regards,
RWS
transpower@aol.com
David Ruska
Honored Contributor

Re: Latest Firmware for Ultrium 460?

> I tried downloading several different firmware files. HPTapeDiagnostics says they're all the "wrong personality", as shown on the attached PDF file.

Thanks - the pdf confirms you have OEM19 (which is what we call the firmware personality, or firmware variant).

All of the HP branded standalone drives should use OEM9 firmware (that's 9, not 19).

The OEM19 firmware is not a variant we are familiar with for either a storageworks standalone or a autoloader/library drive.

One possiblility is the wrong firmware personality was loaded in the manufacturing process (it may be a personality for a specific OEM customer).

So, if the support agent is able to confirm that your drive is an HP surestore branded Ultrium 460, you should talk to your leasing company about getting you a different drive, and have this one returned to HP for replacement. Otherwise, you will not be able to update firmware, when new firmware is released for the standalone drives.
The journey IS the reward.
David Ruska
Honored Contributor

Re: Latest Firmware for Ultrium 460?

I'll comment on your other post:

> In the meantime I downloaded the latest version of the HP LTT and ran the System Performance Test. The result: only 2 MB/sec. The LaCie/Maxtor HD is rated at 60 MB/sec. I have the AHA-39320, which is rated at 320 MB/sec. So there's a bottleneck somewhere. Where?

The system performance test is only measuring the throughput between your hard drive(s) and the system memory. while your HD may support 60MB/sec, that's the "raw" transfer rate reading sectors off the disk. What the LTT "sys perf" test measures (the backup pre-test portion), is reading and traversing the file system AND reading each of the files. The smaller your average file size is, the slower the average transfer rate will be. If you want to see what you're hard disk (and OS/filesystem) can deliver best case, create 1GB of large files (e.g. 8MB) with the restore pre-test, and then use that directory path in the backup pre-test. As an example, my laptop gave me 2MB/sec for the c: drive. When I created 1GB of 8MB files, I was able to get 10MB/sec.

> I next ran the LTO Acceptance Test. No problems.

And since you had previously run the dev perf test and were getting 19MB/sec. I think the drive is operating fine.

> I then did an actual backup of all three logical drives (C, D, E) using NTBackup and got an average speed of only 152 MB/min (although this is better than what I got a few days ago). C-drive got 237 MB/min, D-drive only 96 MB/min, and E-drive got 128 MB/min. System state was done at 189 MB/min. All drives were chkdsk'd before the backup--no problems reported at all. Also all drives were defragmented and are "healthy."

One of the key contributors to slow performance with file-by-file backups is file size. The smaller the average size, the slower the backup. Obviously fragmentation also plays a role, but it sounds like you've covered that.

As I've mentioned in your other thread, the native backup in windows is not very performance oriented (e.g. it doesn't do much caching and probably uses a single reader process). Try one of the full featured backup applications that offer a free trial period (e.g. tapeware), and see if it helps with performance.

Another way to significantly boost backup performance is to use an application that does an "image" backup, which reads the raw sectors, and doesn't need to search out each individual file.

> I have the Ultra320 set to 320 for all drives. Is this in error? I noticed that during the backup the HD seemed to be working a lot harder than the tape drive; i.e., the tape drive light was not flashing constantly, just periodically.

The drives should negotiate for whatever rate they support (e.g. 160 or 320) - you shouldn't to change the HBA settings. I think what you are observing is the overhead of the backup app hunting down each file. It proves the bottleneck is in the disk/filesystem/backup app, and not in the tape drive.
The journey IS the reward.