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Re: Intermittent Device Not Ready errors

 
Ayman Altounji
Valued Contributor

Intermittent Device Not Ready errors

We have a Compaq DL380, Adaptec AHA-2944UWD, Compaq TL891 backup system running Windows 2000 Server and Backup Exec 8.5. A number of backup jobs are failing with the following error (as reported in the Backup Exec log):

Storage device "COMPAQ 1" reported an error on a request to write data to media.

Error reported:
The device is not ready.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^

The problem is happening intermittently, and does not appear to be media-related.

I've just downloaded the latest tape Rompaqs, which I have not yet tried, but in the meantime, does anyone have any other suggestions?

Regards

Tony Langdon, Phones 4U Direct, IT Infrastructure Manager.
3 REPLIES 3
Ayman Altounji
Valued Contributor

Re: Intermittent Device Not Ready errors

did you ever resolve this? i have the exact same problem same setup except im using a 15 slot 2 drive library.

rebuilt the blasted thing many times used compaq scsi cards and changed the scsi leads and offered a chicken to the gods, it seems to be stable if we reboot the server and library daily

- compaq please help-
the unit is still covered by a carepaq and im gonna arrange for it to have a mishap so we can get a new one- the unit is just under 2 years old.
Ayman Altounji
Valued Contributor

Re: Intermittent Device Not Ready errors

We seem to have stablised this somewhat. Our current experience is that if we reboot the server weekly all is well. Much of the stability seems to have been produced by disabling the auto width negotiation on the SCSI adapter card. i.e. we tell the card to use Narrow SCSI. This allows or forces the SCSI speed to be set to 5MB/s. Remember we have an Adaptec card- I don't know if the Compaq Differential cards have this setting. (I though we were going to have to buy Compaq to resolve this, but have held off doing this for the moment)

Note : this has not affected our throughput when backing up. We still get the same performance, but with more stability.

Unfortunately our environment is in such a state of flux at the moment, we seem to be rebooting our server more than once a week, for reasons unconnected with Backup Exec. So our backups are reliable at the moment. But I am fully expecting that when we are not rebooting our server every couple of days, the instability will return. It looks like a memory leak in Backup Exec, but I don't expect to get any time to investigate this theory, in the near future.

Best Wishes
Tony Langdon
Phones4u Direct IT Infrastructure Manager
Ayman Altounji
Valued Contributor

Re: Intermittent Device Not Ready errors

Had enough today and have the compaq engineer coming out tomorrow with a new controller assembly for the dlt library, ill keep you posted if it makes any difference