unable to eject ultrium tape

[John_912]

Dear all,
I am facing problems, I cannot eject a tape from an ULTRIUM 1. Do you have any ideas what to try?
Thank you in advance.

[Luk Vandenbussche]

Hi,

Have you turned off and then again on your drive yet? Optionaly remove also your scsi cable.

[Muthukumar_5]

what are you getting for,

mt -f /dev/rmt/ status

How did you try to eject?

-Muthu

[John_912]

The output of the command is:
Drive:HP Ultrium 1-SCSI
Format:
Status:[0]
File:0
Block 628473

I have tried to eject it with the eject button on the tape drive.
I did not power off the drive nor remove the SCSI because another ultrium tape drive is connected with the same SCSI chain.

[Luk Vandenbussche]

For a good throughput speed during backup, it is advisable to connect each tape drive to a dedicated controller

[Eric Antunes]

Hi John,

I think I had a similar (and never understood since I wasn't at site when happened) situation and I had to turn off/on the drive...

Best Regards,

Eric

[David Ruska]

Recent version(s) of L&TT (www.hp.com/support/tapetools) includes a stuck tape test for Ultrium drives.

You should also run the LTO drive assessment test to check for other problems.

Lastly, there's troubleshooting documentation on the web that you can use for Ultrium issues, and "stuck tape" is right at the top.

Look here: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00039807

[Devender Khatana]

Hi John,

This issue is generally due to faulty media as well.

What does the software ejject do

#mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn offl

Even now if it does not ejject this then possibally the media is stucked in mechanism and can not be ejected without opening the drive.

HTH,
Devender

[Bill Hassell]

You can try holding the eject button down for 10-20 seconds. If that doesn't work and the mt offline command doesn't work, the tape is most likely wrapped around the capstan and it cannot be removed without disassembly. Note also that if this is the case, the jammed tape may have caused some damage or misalignment to occur so the drive should be replaced or risk creating tapes that cannot be read on other tape drives.

[David Ruska]

The stuck tape test in LTT will check for specific fault codes in the drive related to the type of problems Bill mentioned, and let you know if the drive/tape is in an unrecoverable state.