dds 20/40 tape autoloader lockup

[Ayman Altounji]

I have a ML370 with the dds20/40 8 tape autoloader, arcserve 200o sp3 nt 4 sp6a. Uses the internal scsi feature card scsi adapter.

Symptoms:
At some point during backup I will receive the following error message
E3714 Unable to write to media. (MEDIA=FRIDAY, EC=Hardware Error)
at which time the whole drive locks up and requires a full shutdown to unlock. This will occur a few hrs into the backup, but at no noticeable pattern

I have called compaq and got the correct blue cable with the terminator. I have narrowed the problem down to either 1. bad tapes or 2. something I have not figured out yet. Of the 20 tapes I own I have removed 5 that seem to have the most problem. But they are all new tapes and this seems like a high percentage.

Also is there a way to unlock the drive (or better yet not have the drive lockup when it hits a bad tape) without rebooting the server. It seems whenever this drive hits any problem it locks up and will not respond till after a shutdown. I have solved (I hope) all of my problems but this.