Compaq DAT 12/24

[Klaus Schiffgens]

Hi there,
I have problems with a Compaq DAT 12/24 in a ProLiant 2500 with Netware 4.11 SP9 and Arcserve IT 6.6. Drive is attaches to a Compaq ultra wide SCSI controller and Arcserve loads fine finding controller and drive. But whenever the drive shall write to a tape (erase, format, backup whatever), I receive head sync errors or media errors or as someone here said "the drive makes sounds like dancing polka" ending up in "drive needs cleaning", processor utilization goes up to 80% with users losing connections. Press the eject button and processor utilization drops to a one digit value.
So we let the drive change by our hardware vendor: he checked it and returned it saying: everything is ok with the drive. But it still behaved the way mentioned above. So I took the drive, cable and adapter and put it into a PL800 with the same software and it works fine! Made every firmware upgrade for the PL2500 that's available, put the drive back into it and still can't wite to medias. Any suggestions? The drive's firmware is 4.40.

Thanks, Klaus

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Klaus,
download and install LTT http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/ltt/index.html and test your drive. Generate support ticket and take a look into it. It may ask you to recalibrate drive's heads. If so, download recalibration script via LTT (go to 'get files from the web') and run it.
In addition you can try changing SCSI controller to recommended one (maybe just for test) http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg50063.html and check whole SCSI bus for termination
Eugeny

[Klaus Schiffgens]

Hi Eugeny,
thanks for your reply, but as I said: I'm running under NW4.11, so I have to test the drive in a different system as the utility is not available for 4.11. And I'm afraid (strange, eh)it will work fine, as it already did before.
To change the controller to an Adaptec 2940UW is possible. I'll try this next.
I think termination is not the problem, because drive, cable and controller worked in another system without any configuration changes.

Bye, Klaus