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MSL5026SL BRC

 
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Vincent Farrugia
Honored Contributor

MSL5026SL BRC

Hello,

Sorry for bothering you again with this question... but I need confirmation about this. Are the SDLT drives in the MSL5926SL BRC (backward-read compatible)? This issue is raised in MSL5052SL questions and answers:

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/msl5052sl/qa.html

in which it says that "Compaq offers the Backward Read Compatible (BRC) SDLT drive which can read DLT type IV media written on 40/80 GB and 35/70 GB DLT drives".

No mention of this for the MSL5026SL though!!!

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/msl5026/qa.html

Why?

I need an official answer pretty urgently please.

Thanks very much in advance,
Vince
Tape Drives RULE!!!
17 REPLIES 17
Vincent Fleming
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: MSL5026SL BRC

Vince,

The MSL5052SL and MSL5026 use the same tape drive - SDLT220. They have the same specifications, and can both read DLT IV tapes, as per Quantum's specs.

According to Quantum, even the SDLT320 can read DLT IV media.

See http://www.quantum.com/AM/products/dlt/sdlt320/default.htm and http://www.quantum.com/AM/products/dlt/sdlt220/default.htm for details.

The ability to be backward compatible is a function of the drives, not the library.

I don't know why this is not pointed out in the docs.

Vince
No matter where you go, there you are.
Vincent Farrugia
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL5026SL BRC

Thank you for your clarification Vince.

We have a customer who cannot read DLTIV media through his MSL5026SL SDLT drive. What could be the problem?
Tape Drives RULE!!!
Vincent Fleming
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL5026SL BRC

Vince,

According to the Quantum manuals (http://www.quantum.com/pdfs/sdlt220_sdlt320_product_manual.pdf), it can read DLT IV tapes from DLT 8000, 7000, and 4000 drives. (See appendix b).

For any problems, they suggest inspection and cleaning of the cartridge. See the manual for details.

In the old days, we used to see the drives ocasionally that had problems because the read heads were positioned slightly off tolerance - either on the writing device or reading device (or both) that caused them not to be able to exchange media. This occured in both tape drives and floppy drives.

But I haven't seen an instance of that in years.

Are the tapes readable in the older drive? (if they still have it)

-Vince

No matter where you go, there you are.
Vincent Fleming
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL5026SL BRC

Oh - and are you getting any error codes?

No matter where you go, there you are.
Vincent Farrugia
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL5026SL BRC

Hello,

Yes, there are read successfully in the old DLT8000 drive.

For the error messages, I still have to enquire that.

Many thanks so far for your help.

Vince
Tape Drives RULE!!!
Vincent Fleming
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL5026SL BRC

Vince,

If they haven't a copy of L&TT, they can download it from http://www.hp.com/support/tapetools

-Vince
No matter where you go, there you are.
Vincent Farrugia
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL5026SL BRC

Hello,

I went on site today to check with my own eyes :-)

I entered an SDLT tape and after a few seconds, ArcServe 2000 was detecting the media sucessfully. When I entered a DLT IV tape containing a previous backup, the drive succesfully lit up the "write protected" LED, but, after 5 minutes trying to read the tape, ArcServe reported the tape as "unrecognised format".

I tried to give it a DLT IV tape from my office, containing a UNIX tar in it. It lit the "write-proctected" LED successfully, and, surprisingly, took only a few seconds to recognise it as "unrecognised format", as opposed to the 5 minutes of their backups.

They are using 64k block size.

I installed LTT and generated a support ticket, which you can find attached here.

Thanks very much for your help so far, looking forward for more help :-)

Vince
Tape Drives RULE!!!
Eugeny Brychkov
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL5026SL BRC

Vince,
looks like firmware is not the latest: should be 0408 for robot and V51 for drive. Please use LTT to update firmware
Eugeny
Curtis Ballard
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL5026SL BRC

According to the internal specs on the 5026SL, the drives are supposed to be backwards read compatible. There were a lot of early SDLT drives that were not so there is a possibility that early 5026 libraries might have those drives but I can't find any mention of an early version with non-BRC drives.