HP 1760 is 'soft-ejecting' during backup

[Robert1969]

Hello,

We have the Storageworks 1U rack chassis with Qty 2 of the 1760 LTO4 drives inside. Firmware is to latest 52U level.

For one of the drives I notice that when we are running backups, the drive seems to rewind the tape fully and then I hear some clicks and whatnot and then the backup continues.

I am not sure where, but I have heard the term 'soft eject' which I think is the correct term that describes this action.

This is what seems to be happening, that the drive is doing everything that a drive would do to eject a tape cartridge, but the cartridge does not actually come out of the drive.

I hope this makes sense.

After the drive is finished doing all this, the backup continues and nothing seems to be interrupted.

I am not hearing this behavior from the other drive. Anyone know why this could be happening?


Robert

[Trygve Henriksen]

This is a StorageWorks 1/8 Autoloader?
(I'm only aware of 1/8 systems in the 1U size; 1 drive/8slots)

There's many reasons why it would do a 'soft eject'
Maybe the drive is flaky?
It loses control of where it is on the tape?

Write speed can be an issue, especially if it's connected to an older system.
(If the server can't 'feed' it data at a high enough rate, the tape must be stopped and restarted often. That could cause tensioning problems among others.)

Have you run the HP L&TT tool to verify operation?

[Eemans Dany]

Hi,

Check also that the RSM (removable Storage Service) is disabled on the backup server.
This apply's only to Win2000 and W2K3 servers.
The RSM service is used by NT backup.

Dany

[Robert1969]

Sir,

Sorry for the late response...

One other thing I did not mention is that the particular dnrive has started slowing down durign the writing phase of a backup. It is running no faster than 57345 KB/sec, this is uncompressed, so should be nearly at 80000 KB/sec on an LTO4 tape.

I have checked the drives using L&TT, and it seems that the drive in question is showing a warning that states that the drive is no longer recommended for use. I will see about getting a return for the drive.


Robert