HP Surestore DLT1 - Tape jamming

[Mohsin Ghani]

What happens is that whenever I place a tape into the drive I get a sudden 'burring' noise and all three lights on the front of the drive start to flash fro about 5 seconds. Then it will go through a series of forward and rewind motions for about a minute. After this it will make the heavy 'burring' noise again and go through the same routine. It does eventually stop after about 5-6 minutes. If I try to press he eject button it will continue to go through the routine mentioned above. It was working fine for months then all of a sudden this problem started. I have upgraded to the latest firmaware. Can anyone help me as I need to do some serious backups before an office move. Thanks

Mohsin Ghani
IT Systems Administrator

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

Sounds like a tape problem.

Replace the tape cartidge and try again.

It should clear out the problem.

HTH,
Vince

[Mohsin Ghani]

Vince,

Thanks for the quick response. Unfortunately I have tried 3 tapes - one of which was a new one. I got the same results with all of them. Any further thoughts. Thanks

Mohsin Ghani

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

Unfortunately the drive is experiencing problems with the buckling process and isn't loading the tape correctly, having to do a lot of retries.

How old is the drive? I would suggest calling hardware support if it is still under warranty.

HTH,
Vince

[David Ruska]

Since Mohsin mentioned tape motion sounds, I don't think the problem is in the buckling (i.e. loading/threading) process. DLT drive noises are a bit tough to accurately describe. On DLT (not DLT1) a "buzzing" noise is heard when the drive is resetting the head position during calibration. DLT1 drives may do the same. It sounds to me that the drive is having difficulty calibrating the tape.

The problem could be caused by incompatable media (e.g. media written in a DLT drive). Take a look at the following document, and see if it helps:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=lpg50057&locale=en_US&taskId=8413&taskName=troubleshoot+a+problem&prodSeriesId=42872&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesName=hp+surestore+dlt1+drives&docId=82018

Another possibility is the head is dirty and/or contaminated. In that case, I would load a new cleaning tape three times, and then see if the problem is resolved.

Looking at the drive error log entries in the LTT support ticket viewer might help shed some light on the problem as well.

[Mohsin Ghani]

Thanks all for your input into this problem.

David,

I have put a cleaning tape in to clean the heads before and I am going to do it again. One thing I have noticed now is that I am getting a blinking READY LED. Any idea what this means? Thanks

Mohsin Ghani

[David Ruska]

A flashing Ready LED only indicates that the tape is in motion. Solid indicates a tape is loaded, and no Ready light indicates the tape is unloaded.

Does the clean light come on when you load the failing tapes?

Note: you probably know this, but just to be safe, the DLT1 uses a special DLT1 cleaning tape, not a standard DLT cleaning tape.

[Mohsin Ghani]

David,

Thanks for the explanation but it doesn't explain why the READY led was flashing when no tape was in it. Having said this I cam in this morning the led is not flashing.

The tape drive that I have is the HP SURESTORE DLT1 which doesn't have a clean light. It only has 3 leds - 'write protected', 'ready', 'caution'.

Thanks for the mention on the cleaning tape. I didn't know that it required a special tape. However, I am using the one that came with the drive, so I assume that HP gave me the correct cleaning tape.

I am very near to the conclusion that the drive may have developed a fault although there is no apparent reason why it should fail.

If anyone knows what could be the matter with this drive please let me know.

Thanks again.

Mohsin Ghani

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

If your cleaning tape is brown, then it's compatible with DLT1. DLT80 cleaning tapes are off-white in colour. Your drive would just spit a DLT80 cleaning tape without doing anything anyway.

It seems that your drive developed a fault in the calibration process (thanks David). How old is the drive? These things happen in tape drives, it's not something that occurs rarely. Especially if your drive is over 1 year or 1.5 years old.

I would call hardware support to check it out.

HTH,
Vince

[David Ruska]

> ... but it doesn't explain why the READY led was flashing when no tape was in it

That state is not documented (at least in all the documentation I have).

> DLT1 which doesn't have a clean light. It only has 3 leds - 'write protected', 'ready', 'caution'.

Sorry, I meant the 'caution' light (DLT drives call it the cleaning light).

> If your cleaning tape is brown, then it's compatible with DLT1.

I'm cautious calling any of the tapes brown, since they all could be considered a shade of brown (except SDLT which is green). The DLT1 cleaning tape is a 'putty' grey color, but regardless of color, it should say 'Benchmark DLT1 CLEANING TAPE'.

Lastly, you mentioned updating firmware, so I'm assuming you did that with HP L&TT. Can you generate a support ticket and tell us what events are in the drive error log?

(The call center may ask you for a support ticket anyway).