Tapebackup Problem-Tape Reduction, Clean light going off!!

[Jeff Goldberg]

I'm having problems with my tape backups. I'm running Seagate Backup Exec (Now Veritas) 7.0 with a SureStore Dat24. The problem is the tape is getting a warning that it has been reduced in size and then the Dat24 clean light is going off. It's happened in the last three tape runs.

Help me, please-does anyone have a idea or answer why this is happening?

[paul courry]

The usual reason is either

a) A dirty drive. Running a cleaning tape 3 times through it usually solves the problem.

b) The drive is getting old and is ready for replacement.

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

Tape drives *WILL* eventually wear out and
become unusuable. DO NOT clean a tape drive
unless it is requested by the light coming
on. Cleaning tape drives more regularly than
this will result in the heads being damaged
by the constant abrasiveness of the cleaning
tape and the result is a drive that has worn
out before it's time. Given that the light
has come on after the last three runs says
that it is time to replace the drive. This
is done as part of your maintenance agreement
if you have one.

HTH
-Michael

[liew chee wah_2]

I am not an expert but I can share my experience with you. I used DAT24 drive and 12/24GB tapes. Last time, I face problem with my informix backup. Before the backup is completed, the cleaning light goes on. And the backup failed. Finally, I and able to fixed this problem by telling informix my backup tape is only 12GB rather then 24GB. I guess this problem was due to the tape drive hardware compression algorithm can't achieve its intended efficiency when backing up Informix database. In this case, Informix 'think' it can write 24GB but actually it can't, when it reach the end of tape, problem arises. Try to configure your backup software to backup 12GB for each tape rather than 24GB. I assume you uses 12/24GB DDS3 tapes. Good luck.