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Ultrium 1 drive fails to load tape

 
Graeme Fleming
Occasional Visitor

Ultrium 1 drive fails to load tape

Howdy

I have a C7401B 100/200GB drive that has suddenly stopped accepting tapes.

If the tape is pushed in there is some resistance to the insertion & the tape is never accepted by the drive and enagaged by the mechanism (dropped onto the spindle).

I thought it might be a dirty sensor so pulled it apart & got a load dust & fluff out of the case & drive. It then started to work (tested with load/eject cycle about a dozen times); I reassembled & it's now not working again. Could it be a poor connection/dry joint on one of the sensors maybe?

Any thoughts as to what may be the prob & how to resolve?

Cheers

1 REPLY 1
Richard Bickers
Trusted Contributor

Re: Ultrium 1 drive fails to load tape

All that dust and fluff doesn't sound good. Even if your sensors are OK, getting that amount of debris around the head may well stop it reading and writing. Did you try a vacuum cleaner? These drives are pretty good with 'standard organic' dust but can be damaged from grease, construction debris etc.

You could try using library and tape tools and pull a ticket. The drive health section will read the internal fault logs and maybe give some idea what the drive thinks is happening.

See http://www.hp.com/support/lttfaq

Since you've already taken it apart, I'd say clean it out with a vacuum making sure you don't touch the heads, use a cleaning tape a couple of times and it it's still not working pull an LTT ticket. If you need help understanding the ticket please attach to this thread and we'll take a look.

I'd say the dust is the culprit. Good luck.

Please have a look to see if you can protect the drive from futher dust. Is it near a walkway or air vent? Is it low down? Don't forget there's a fan at the back of these drives constantly sucking air into the front of the drive so dust can build up if there's any around.

These drives are normally quite good at self cleaning if they are used regularly. Is this drive in regular use? How often do you change your media? New media has a greater cleaning effect because it's slightly more abrasive (but not so as to wear the heads out - they're made of much stronger stuff).

Richard. LTT.

P.S. We don't normally recommend taking these drives apart but given the state it's in this does sound like your last resort.
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