HP Ultrium 1-SCSI Drive and 1/9 C7145 Autoloader firmware

[Dave Williams UK]

LTT shows no firmware available for the above devices whereas I have another unit with later firmware. E.g. This unit reports drive E36R/OEM2 and autoloader 2600 and the other unit reports drive E3BR/OEM2 and autoloader 2710. Equally when I ran a drive test (which failed sadly) it reports that the firmware is out of date. I have seen recommendation that you let LTT select the firmware but it seems I need to do it manually (or select from a local list previously downloaded)

[Curtis Ballard · Accepted solution]

That product is out of support life and the latest versions of L&TT don't fully support it anymore. If you are using 4.x L&TT what you can do is limited but I think you can still download firmware if you first get the firmware files from hp.com.

L&TT 3.5 should still be available for use with that library.

[Efrain Valencia]

LTT might not be able to find the FW file due to networking issues (firewall most likely, I've seen sometimes that the unix version has a harder time to connect to HP to check the files)

Is that an LTO1 LVD drive? (Ultrium 230 LVD)

I think I can find the FW files for you:

This should be the file for the autoloader:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/information_storage/software/ltt/firmware/LTT_C7145_2710.frm

And most likely, this the one for the drive:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/information_storage/software/ltt/firmware/LTT_Ultrium_1-SCSI_E3BR_OEM2.frm


--Efra

[Dave Williams UK]

Thank you to both for your quick replies.
I am using Linux versions but dont have any restriction on outbound packets to the LAN from the server on my firewall.

I will try the 3.x L&TT. Is it likley to tell me anything different in diagnosing my faults?

At present both units are failing the Drive Assessment test.
- Amount of data required~R test option : Default
- Iteration number: 1 of 1
- Overall Margin: Warning (1.4 GB written)
- Wrap 4 Margin: Warning

but dont know how to interpret what this means.

I did see another failed test saying
"margin (<-100%)"
but that is equally cryptic.

I am a little suspicious. Although one of the units is giving me media related problems (hence the reason for running L&TT) the other is a standby device which sees very little service - so I wouldnt expect it to be showing the same error.

Can anyone offer any help?

Dave

[Curtis Ballard]

The "wrap margin" warning means that at some spot in one of the "wraps" on the tape there is a location where the drive had to re-write the data several times to get the required signal quality. The tapes are written serpentine so the head writes down the tape and back then moves up and does it again. Each down and back is a "wrap".

The tape has built in margin and the drive does a read after write so it can measure the signal it wrote. If the signal isn't as high as it wants then it writes the block again. When all of the extra tape (margin) was used up in the re-write process then L&TT reports the < 100% margin meaning that all of the margin has been used up and the useful capacity of the tape will go down.

Frequently the drives will still perform well long after the tape is worn enough or the head is worn enough that all the margin gets used up as the minimum allowed write quality is quite high.

[Dave Williams UK]

OK That makes technical sense. (I have been dealing with various digital tape technologies professionally for about 25 years now and for my sins designed the worlds first digital Air Traffic Control radar recorder - so I understand the principles of how LTO works!).

It was <-100% not <100% that was reported which was slightly misleading. Maybe that was purely presentational license by the software author!

Where I am struggling is that both drives report failed (with "The drive is no longer recommended for use") on the Drive Assessment test and on other tests appear to report similar results between drives albeit I seem to get differing results each time I try.

However in practice one of them is reasonably OK the other one is unreliable for backup. The main failure are rewrite and fast forward filemark errors reported by my linux based backup system.

Beyond the acknowledged uncertainty due to the failures which prevent the other test results from being validated the drives seem to indicate plenty of head life etc and typically my media has only used up a moderate % of its various parameter cycles

How do I tell what is really wrong?

I need to determine whether my backup solution is worth repairing (again) or whether to call it quits and reinvest in something like a removable disk solution.

As I mentioned before I am a one man organization I cant afford to waste my limited resources!

Thanks
Dave

[Dave Williams UK]

As suggested in the post above has anyone got a linux 3.x version of LTT?

I can only find HPUX or Windows versions still available on HP's web site.