Problem whit DDS3 in K570

[Alejandro Castiglioni]

I have a problem with my HP 9000 K series. I used to have 2 DDS3 tape drives, one internal and one external. First I had a problem with the external tape drive, instead of replacing the whole box I replaced only the drive that's inside the cabinet. There my problem began. If I use tar I have a good performance in both drives (same performance on internal and external) but that's not an option for me, because all the backup scripts are written to use fbackup. Using fbackup, the internal drive functioned perfect, but a backup that used to take 40 min in the external tape drive now took more than 3 hours. In fact, that very same backup taken on the internal drive still took 40 mins.
Thinking that the new drive had a problem I swapped the drive with the internal one, and for my surprise, the problem didn't follow the drive, it stood in the external drive (which was formerly connected as internal). As I don't need to use the CD very often I chose to take it out of the system and connect the two tape drives as internal. It worked fine for a couple of days, but it began reporting problems in one of the tape drives. Ok, I changed the drive for a new one. Now the other drive is reporting problems, I thought "Ok Murphy's laws DO exist, I changed the other drive for a new one". I still get errors in those drives, one day is in one of them and the other day is in the other one.
Maybe you have an answer for this questions:
1) Why couldn't I get the drive to work connected as external? Even with the one that was perfectly working as internal.
2) Is there some restriction to use two tape drives connected to the internal SCSI bus?
3) Would I be using wrong revisions? The drives are all C1537A. Should I look for a specific Rev or something?

By the way the switches in the bottom of the drive are all on but SW3, which is off.

I would appreciate any information you could give me on this.

Thanks in advance.

Matias Oberti

[Rodney Hills]

Interesting problem.

I've heard that putting 2 tape drives on the same SCSI controller is not a good idea, but is not forbidden.

Does your cabinet holding the tape drive have seperate toggle switches for setting the SCSI id#? Is it possible that the tape drive in that bay has a SCSI id# the same as another device.

Apart from that, I would say it's a hardware issue with your cabinet and a technician should be called.

HTH

-- Rod Hills