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Re: C1537/a C1554/a unable to write DDS3

 
Florian Zschocke
Occasional Advisor

C1537/a C1554/a unable to write DDS3

I think now it is really time and up to HP to tell the truth about this drive and find a customer friendly solution. I have now three drives here, all from 2000 and the warranty is gone for two. They all stopped working from one day to the other after nearly two years. This means, costs over 1500.- $ for two years. I now believe that there has to be counter in the firmware. I tried everything cleaning, recalibration, new firmware on all drives. None of them were fixed by those operations. So I say if there is no enhanced warranty agreement, they will loose the middleware in a very short time. I have one Sony DDS3, also from 2000 witch is sill working.
So they loose the middleware printers to Brother, Notebooks and Streamer to Sony and so on.
Be aware HP and excuse my poor English.
14 REPLIES 14
Ted Ellis_2
Honored Contributor

Re: C1537/a C1554/a unable to write DDS3

hmmm.. I have a number of HP DDS3 drives and I think I have had 2 go bad (out of 12) in 3 years. Of course we have support agreements on all of our important equipment, which also covers these drives. Quick call and HP is here in a flash to replace the drive. Seems odd that 3 drives would all die in close proximity. There may be something else going on... as there is no counter in the firmware... I have never had to upgrade firmware on the drives.
Florian Zschocke
Occasional Advisor

Re: C1537/a C1554/a unable to write DDS3

So this very hypothetic, but you won???t find any physical damages on these drives and
I have seen a lot of drives in my live, also drives with five and more years and really finished once. Of course if you do so something, you will do it only on Ready Trade or OEM once.
So it would be very funny, if there will be the news some day, that someone found the l&tt script to reset this counter. I???m waiting for this.
madoc
Trusted Contributor

Re: C1537/a C1554/a unable to write DDS3


There is no "firmware counter" or any other similar contrived system in a HP DAT drive to wear your drive out, thus forcing you to buy new ones.

Not knowing how you use your drives, I can't really comment on whether they are genuinely at fault. You also do not describe the symtpoms of the 'failure'.

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg51254.html

It sounds like you have already tried the recalibration scripts

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg50236.html

Usually, you first avenue of getting help should be to contact one of our hp call centres. These people should help you, whether or not your drive is warranty (although your drive will need to be in warranty to make an exchange):

http://www.hp.com/support/callcenters

cheers

John
Eagles may soar in the clouds but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
Florian Zschocke
Occasional Advisor

Re: C1537/a C1554/a unable to write DDS3

> There is no "firmware counter" or any other > similar contrived system in a HP DAT drive
> to wear your drive out, thus forcing you to
> buy new ones.

Perhaps the examinations of the next weeks will show that. In the moment we believe that there are modifications of algorithms that controls the tape-positioning.

> Not knowing how you use your drives, I can't > really comment on whether they are genuinely > at fault. You also do not describe the
> symptoms of the 'failure'.

The drives were used 5 days a week by a amount ~ 5GB since the middle of 2000.
They were cleaned every 2-4 weeks using a DDS-CleaningCartridge.
Alexander M. Ermes
Honored Contributor

Re: C1537/a C1554/a unable to write DDS3

Hi there.
This is one of the reasons, why you should get support contracts for your hardware.
You pay less on a suport contract than for new hardware.
By the way.
We have used DDS drives for backups for several years. The drives usually failed after
18-20 months. this is not unusual according to the high usage of these drives.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes
.. and all these memories are going to vanish like tears in the rain! final words from Rutger Hauer in "Blade Runner"
Florian Zschocke
Occasional Advisor

Re: C1537/a C1554/a unable to write DDS3

At
surestore_dat_24_tape_drive.pdf they say 300.000 or 200.000 hours at 12% duty cycle.
If I believe that, my drives should work for the next five years.


madoc
Trusted Contributor

Re: C1537/a C1554/a unable to write DDS3


yes well.
Good luck with finding the non-existant "firmware counter" - while you are about it maybe you could locate the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant !

cheers

John
Eagles may soar in the clouds but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
Florian Zschocke
Occasional Advisor

Re: C1537/a C1554/a unable to write DDS3

That was really something that had to be said!
cheers - and don't forget, alcohol kills neurons.





John Mackelden
New Member

Re: C1537/a C1554/a unable to write DDS3

First of all, let me agree with John Nash. There is catagorically NO device within the drive to end its life and make the customer buy new ones (I would imagine such a thing might potential be illegal in any case). There is a logging device within the drive that is used to support customers, but this is all it is, a logging device - it has no effect on the operation of the drive, it just collects data.

There could be any number of reasons why the drives have failed, again, it is best to call HP support and have them analyse the error codes and determine your best course of action.

Some things to consider are:
- you have been cleaning the drives, have you been replacing the cleaning tapes? After 50 uses the cleaning tapes expire.
- are you over using the media you use to back up your data, has this worn out?
- are you keeping your media (when not in the drive) in a suitable environment.
- is the drive in a suitable environment (i.e. an office environment, away from excessive contamination etc.).
- what is the duty cycle of the drive, if the transfer rate is low for your 5GB of data the drive could be doing excessive hours and repositioning.

All of these things can be considered, and, as you can imagine, a number of these areas could potentially cause 2 drives to fail together (i.e. if your cleaning tapes expired).

Call HP support and have them advise you.