DLT 4000 read error

[Michael Izak]

I have a DLT 4000 tape drive -- I'm able to backup my system to the tape but when I do a verify I get an error:

tape device reported an error on a request to read data from tape. error reported: hardware failure.

What does this mean and is the tape drive seriously compromised?

Thank you

[Ralf Loehmann_2]

Hello Michael,

a hardware failure would mean something might be wrong with your drive.

You might check your drive with the LTT tool:
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/ltt/index.html

Regards,
Ralf.

[Michael Izak]

I never heard of the LTT tools so I downloaded and installed them. They worked fine and recognized my tape drive. They reported I still have a read failure problem. I thought the tape heads were dirty like on a VCR so I took the read/write head out, cleaned it with alcohol across the surface, and put the head back in. The LTT tools tested and reported the read/write head worked fine. I continued making more backups but when I tried to veryify the backup the drive reported a read error (hardware error)

It looks like the read/write heads had gone bad or dirty. Is there a simple replacement, repair or cleaning procedure for the read/write heads? I hate to toss out an entire tape drive because of dirty or bad heads.