Replaced 12/24 DAT and now get bad media errors

[Travis Rossow]

I replaced a 12/24 DAT drive and now when I go into either Veritas BE 8.5 or NTBACKUP, I get bad media error when I try to label or inventory an old tape. This happened to me yesterday when I replaced a 20/40 DAT. I replaced drivers etc, but what fixed it was using new tapes. Any suggestions for getting my old tapes to work?

[Terri Harris]

What type of media is being used? What is the media type for the "old" tapes versus the new tapes?
Are you using the same backup software, same version?

[David Holbrook]

You did not indicate if the new drive is made by the same MFD as the old one. Tapes used in say a Sony drive will not be usable in an HP drive because they format the media differently. Were the old tapes made with the same Veritas software? I have never been able to get NTBackup to use the tapes formatted and written to by the Veritas software without a lot of work, and NTBACKUP will not recover any data written by Veritas, and vice-versa. The only way I have been able to re-use tapes between NTBackup and Veritas has been by erasing the tapes under the original software, then importing/formatting the tapes under the new system software. Same type problem between NTBACKUP and Win 98 backup or WIN2000 backup...they do not talk the same language or use the tapes the same way (which, by the way, is why you always want to have at least two drives of the same MFD and OS in order to recover old data)! Good luck.

[Travis Rossow]

The tape drives are both Compaq, but that's just what's on the outside of the box. Same version of Veritas Be 8.5. The tapes are the same ones as before. I'm going to try brand new tapes and see how it goes.

[Marino Meloni_1]

hi,
for sure you need to restore the tapes with the same application you use when you backup the data.
also be sure you select the same block size, I had some case where for performance tuning, the default block size where changed, and these tapes cannot be read in other system with default value

marino