SDLT reliability

[Steve Reece_3]

That's useful Aaron. Something that I'd thought about but having been told that the errors were either due to the media or the drive, my mate discounted that.
Thanks!

[Cass Witkowski]

There was an article about getting parity errors during backups or even backup hanging if the WSQUOTA and or WSEXTENT was too small.

[Teengh Hergh]

We have 16 110/220 Drives and we are facing the same problem. We have been working with HP since November 2004. HP had replace all the drives, but the errors are still there. HP 2ndary FE think we have worn out cartridges even though the cartridges were less than 2 years old and they are used less than they advertised.

We recently ran Tape Edge Damage test for the new drives and 5 of the 16 replaced drives were failed.

Not sure where to go from here.

[Steve Reece_3]

Sorry that you seem to be getting the same problems Teengh. HP first and second line support are telling us that it's a media issue. How that helps when a brand new, HP supplied tape fails I'm not sure!

[Jeffrey Willemsen]

With regard to the tape edge damage test: if it fails it does not mean the drive failed, the cartridge you tested with is at fault. Replace that one. The message was not entirely clear about that.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Have a MSL that is running for almost 3 years. No problems until now.

But I lost count of how many drive/controller replacements we have had for the DLT891.

Wim

[Harry Su]

We also got endless troubles with HP SDLT tape drive. We bought two servers at the same time, one with DLT and another with SDLT. For two years we had no issues in that DLT drive, however, 3 replacements had been done to the SDLT tape drive (thanks to maintenance contract) and we did not see any improvements. We are still continuously having tape damage problem for every one or two month. I personally gave up calling HP for the replacement again. I believe it is a design problem and is impossible to resolve by changing tape device. Maybe it is the better way to change SDLT to another tape device.

[Jaclyn Rothe]

The issue with SDLT drives is that the tapes are very sensitive to tape-edge damage. Shipping, and incorrect handling can cause TED.
Tapes with TED can bring down SDLT drives.
I recommend DLT drivs or LTO drives.

[Jaclyn Rothe]

The best advice at stopping the endless circle of TED is to replace the tapes and the drive. The problem is if a tape with TED is inserted in a drive, it will cause drive issues. If you run the TED test with no tape in the drive it will deterine if the drive has tape edge damage. LTT will compile a log of tapes with TED, however it is not easy to determine which of these tapes correspond to with ID number.
If you run the TED test on the tape and it passes with no TED damage, then the tape should be fine, set it aside and try the next tape, and so on. Set aside the tapes that are reported as having TED, and dispose of them.

[Steve Reece_3]

Thanks Jaclyn. That makes sense.