Problems with SDLT Drives

[Ayman Altounji]

I recently purchased 11 SDLT drives for internal use to backup my 11 exchange severs. Since installation of these drives I have had 3 drives where the buttons would not respond, therefor not allowing me to eject the tape. Powering down the server and restarting clears this issue. Two drives that have eaten the tape. At $100 a pop for tapes, that isn't cheap. and 1 drive with constant write errors, I wound up send back for replacement.

The problem is that these drives are in my high availability servers and I can't afford downtime. I never had these kinds of problems with the 35/70s. Has anyone seen this on the new SDLT drives or does anyone have a solution. Having problems with 6 out of 11 drives is not good.

Thanks
Michael

[Ayman Altounji]

What firmware do you have in your SDLT drives. Could you eject the tapes using your backup software?

We've had one SDLT drive where the ejection mechanism failed to perform reliable ejects.

You ought to be able to add/remove SDLT drives from your servers without downtime (unless you've actually installed them INSIDE the servers?????)