SureStore 818 DLT possible upgrade to SDLT?

[CA973971]

annyone know if it's possible to install a SDLT driver in the autoloader box?
(the DLT driver is broken and need change, I think upgrade at same time sounds like the thing to do)

is it possible?
/C

[CA713937 · Accepted solution]

No, that's one swap that is not possible. The drives use different loading mechanisms (a handle on the DLT drive and soft load on the SDLT), and the library interface communication is different enough to require firmware mods.

How "broke" is broke on the your 8K drive?

If you have a dropped leader, that's easily repaired.

The DLT4K, DLT7K, and DLT8K drive assemblies are interchangable in the x18 autoloaders.

[CA973971]

Hi, ok no change of driver to SDLT then.

Well how broken, hard to say so I describe symthoms.

fist, the DLT drive did report massive harware write/read errors, I did change to new DLT tapes and did extra cleaning with cleaning tape

Then the DLT driver did respond with reporting new and old data tapes as cleaning tape and backupexec 9.1 did not accept inport of new tape.

so I think, mabye bad drivers or firmware, so I did upgrade the firmware and the drivers on the server witch result in the autoloader did report "No Drive" and the OS did not detect the DLT drive. I think the firmware upgrade did go wrong. (firmware upgrade with HP tool)

To solve that problem I did call HP helpdesk and they did say more or less, that the DLT unit was broken and not possible to repare with firmware becorse I did not get contact with the unit.

Recomended solution was to replace the DLT unit.

anny Idea what to do?

[CA713937]

The "no drive" message in the autoloader front panel indicates that the drive is not responding via the serial connection.

Does that problem persist across power-cycles?

If you disconnect the unit from the host (leaving the bus terminated), power it up, and it says "no drive", that is a good sign that the drive is failing power-on self test, or has an imcomplete firmware image.

When you updated firmware with HP LTT, did it complete successfully, or was there an error message?

LTT keeps backup event logs, so there's a good chance the history of the firmware udpate is still in the log files.

I'll assume that the firmware update was not interrupted, the autoloader was not power-cycled, etc.

Also, you should have terminated your backup app, and disabled the Windows Removable Storage service, before running HP LTT.

If you want, zip up the EventLog*.ltt files in the logs subfolder of LTT, and email them to ltt_team@hp.com, and I can look to see if anything unusual happened with the firmware update.

[CA973971]

Hi

Yes there was some kind of problem with the firmware upgrade, some kind of lost connection and a countdown to like 700 sek

The power and basic things like that was ok.

I did not stop the backupexec service or anny service like that befor firware upgrade.

I did check the autoloader firmware and it was current 2.12 and no need to upgrade. Well, the software from HP did say it so...

The eventlog's are in the zip file.

/C

[CA713937]

OK, thanks for the event logs - I'll look them over in the morning (OK, when the sun comes up kind of morning).

Yes, the 2.12 firmware is the latest for the controller.

The LTT splash screen does warn that the backup application and services should be stopped prior to continuing LTT.

I don't know if that was the cause of your firmware update failure - we'll see what the logs show.

[CA713937]

OK, I decided to look at the logs - maybe I'll get some sleep tomorrow night.

It shows the drive accepting all 145 of 145 images (going from V59 to V86). Then the drive did not respond for 600 seconds, and the I/O timed out.

Assuming that power was not iterrupted to the drive during the time when the image was accepted and was being copied to the NVRAM, the most likely cause is the drive firmware update process failed (either it could not erase the flash, or it could not rewrite it).

Let me see if anyone would be interested in doing an FA on it. If you could send your email address to ltt_team@hp.com, I'll get back in touch with you.

[CA973971]

Hi
I'm werry grateful that you take time to look into this problem.

I did send the loggs to that email and a link to this forum...

Here is's office time... but I will stay on this when you have office time if it helps.

Do you think it's possible to make the firmware work agen? I can not access the DLT unit in the HP tool but is it possible to do it on more hw closee way? like a firware reset?

/C

[CA973971]

I did find this on the forum... sounds like my problem...


http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=426247

well.. just order a new one then...

/C

[CA713937]

There is no way to get the unit back to life if the firmware image is incomplete. Unlike some other devices, the DLT drives do not have a separate boot code image (that could be used to redownload the main code).