help with tape drive hardware issues

[Chris Fadrowski]

I have an N class with a DDS3 tape drive. When the tape drive isn't used for a while, it seems to not respond. I can do an ioscan and it will find it as claimed, but if i put a tape in, no lights, and "no tape device" when running my make_tape_recovery. I have to pull the tape drive and re-insert it (reboot tape device), then all works fine. HP has replaced the tape drive stating the it was faulty on previous tape drives that did this same thing. But this is our 3rd drive. Doubt it's faulty. Any ideas.. ? it's cleaned regular basis using a cleaning tape.

[Steven E. Protter]

I would suspect cabling, or maybe even a bad power connecter.

It might be worse, the drive might be getting ready td die.

ioscan -fnC tape

This command should show the tape device and claimed. If it is not claimed its time to do a hardware call or consider replacing the cables, power connector or drive. I've recently learned how to do this and is not too hard.

SEP

[Dario_1 · Accepted solution]

Hi!

Run the following command to check the status of the tape drive:

Use the mt command to do this. ie

mt -t /dev/rmt/0m status

Drive: HP C1537A
Format:
Status: [0]
File: 0
Block: 0

You will get this response when the tape is in.

mt -t /dev/rmt/1m status

no tape loaded

You will get this response if no tape was loaded.

AS SEP mentined, I think you are having a cable and/or connector issue.

Regards,

Dario

[A. Clay Stephenson]

This sounds suspiciously like a bad connection. I would also have HP check the power supply voltages. Tapes drives are often very sensitive to slightly out-of-spec voltages.

[twang]

Clean the tape drive, if the orange LED is still on after cleaning, try to do the following tests and see whether they can succeed:
1.
# tar cvf /dev/rmt/0m /tmp
2.
# fbackup -f /dev/rmt/0m -i /tmp
3.
# dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/rmt/0m bs=64k