MSL5026SL BRC

[Vincent Farrugia]

Thanks for your help.

Eugeny, I will try to update the firmware and fingers-crossed.

Curtis, what could be the problem then? I know the SDLT IS backward-compatible, cuz it IS recognising the DLT IV tapes as such, cuz the write-protect LED lights up as soon as I enter a DLT IV tape, even if the notch is not in that position. I think this is a media recognition problem rather than a compatibility issue. What do you think?

Vince

[Curtis Ballard]

Vince,

I have confirmed that no MSL 5026SL libraries were shipped with non-BRC drives. Your drives should be able to read the DLT type IV media. I'm not an expert on the SDLT drives, but I do know of a few possibilities.

Clean the drive - the type IV read capability uses a different read channel that may need cleaned even if there are no clean requests issued when using SDLT tapes.

Check the format of the tape in a DLT8000 drive. If the tape shows up as DLT4000 format the drive won't read it. If the tape shows up as DLT7000 format the drives do not do as good of a job reading the tapes.

Other than those suggestions I can't offer much more help on the SDLT drives.

[Curtis Ballard]

One more tip. Some early DLT8000 drives have different heads and may write tapes that SDLT drive can not read. There isn't anything wrong with either drive in this case. Other DLT8000 drives should read those tapes fine but SDLT drives are a little more limited in what they can read.

If you can provide serial numbers for the drives that the tapes are written in I can probably check and see if they are the earlier drives. An LTT support ticket will show that serial number and some ISV applications will also show it.

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

I've read that the SDLT drives are backward-compatible to DLT8000, DLT7000, DLT4000 and DLT1 drives... basically anything that can be written to a DLT IV tape. You said DLT4000 format cannot be read?

Vince

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

These are the serial numbers that I managed to gather. Don't know whether they are ok.

News... The drive was in a DLT 718 (so actually it is a DLT7000 drive!).

These are the numbers:

Product number: C6280J
Numbers:
462C031633
DE7AA10032

Thanks for all your help,
Vince

[Curtis Ballard]

Since you report that the drives are DLT7000 it is very possible that the tapes are not written at a field strength that the SDLT drives can not read. All DLT7000 drives have a head very similar to the early 8000 drives and SDLT drives have difficulty reading tapes from some early 8000 drives.

I have not done a lot of testing with SDLT drives and backwards compatibility. It might be possible to read DLT4000 tapes with them but I wouldn't count on it. I've had trouble with DLT4000 tapes in DLT8000 drives. Always had a 4000 drive around though so never bothered to fight it.

It is starting to sound like this might be a question that will have to go back to Quantum.

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

Thanks a lot Curtis. You really helped me out. I will try to convince the customer that the drive it was written with is not compatible with SDLT drive. He bought the MSL5026SL with the assumption that he could read his old tapes with it, so that would be difficult to swallow for him.

I will go on site today to perform a firmware upgrade of drive and library, just in case it is a firmware issue. In any case, many thanks once again!

Regards,
Vince

[Dave van Beeren]

Hello Vincent,

I have the same problem with the incompatibility to read SDLT 110/220 Tapes from the MSL5026SL to another simular SLDT drive. Under Arcserve 2000 it regonize the tapelabel but when i want to scan or merge the tape the drive is saying "please mount media in drive". Is there a fix for this particulary problem ?