DLT 8000

[Kevin Arentsen]

I have a DLT 8000 tape drive. The drive and software I have works fine. The problem I have is that the drive will not recognize some of my tapes. It makes a bad growling noise shortly after putting the tape in. It will then either error out with bad media or unrecognized media. I only use HP C5141F tapes. I just bought 2 new ones and am getting the same result with those. I do have several old ones that still work. Are there any differences in these tapes? Do I have to do something to them to get working? I'm using Win2K with Backup Exec 8.6. Thanks in advance.

[George_Dodds]

I would'nt worry about the growling noise to much my dlt drives make that annoying noise from time to time.

I sometimes get the same error if the drive is on density override, when i put it back to my normal setting of 40 and compress it's fine.

[David Ruska]

The periodic mechanical grinding noise you hear is the drive recalibrating the head position. The drive is most likely having difficulty calibrating the specific tape(s). Is the 'cleaning light' on? New tapes occasionally carry debris left over from the slitting process during manufacturing, and this gets deposited into the drive on the first load. Run a cleaning tape through the drive (in rare cases you may need to clean twice or three times).

If you have this connected to a Windows platform, you can install HP Library & Tape Tools (www.hp.com/support/tapetools), and use it to view the drive event log to see the specific error details. The device analysis section in the support ticket may also provide some clues to your trouble.