excessive error rate reading(Tape error)

[Henry_52]

Hello,

I tried to restore DAT tapes to OpenVMS system.
Some tapes were restored successfully But some tape were failed.(I cleaned tape drive and I restored these tapes with no errors few weeks ago.)

Please check below error and let me know.

Thank you.

Henry

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
%BACKUP-E-READERRS, excessive error rate reading MKE300:[000000]*.*;
-SYSTEM-F-DRVERR, fatal drive error
%BACKUP-I-OPERSPEC
%BACKUP-I-OPERASSIST, operator assistance has been requested

[Martin P.J. Zinser · Accepted solution]

Hello Henry,

looks like either broken drive or broken tapes.
The best way to check is

- Restore other tapes with the same drive
--> If it works drive should be ok, probably
tapes are broken

- Restore tapes on another drive
--> If it works tapes should be ok, probably
drive is broken.

This does assume the tapes where written on the same drive. Else there is still the possibility that your tapes do not match the drive, e.g. trying to read DDS-4 tapes with a DDS-2 drive.

Greetings, Martin

[Antoniov.]

Hi Henry,
I use DAT since 1995 but I'm not full satisfied; it's usually meet drive error using DAT.
To minimize trouble I hint to all my customers:
1) Clean driver weekly;
2) Change tape cartdridge every six months;
3) Don't use DDS cartdridge different form driver (DDS2 for old driver as TLZ07, DDS3 for more rececent and DDS4 for last drivers).

About your immeatly problem, if you can access to another driver, try restore from it. For my experience, execssive error rate is very difficult to solve :-(

Antonio Vigliotti

[Mohamed K Ahmed]

the most probable cause is that your drive has gone bad. Try to clean the drive, that way you clean the heads on the drive, if it didn't work, just replace the drive.

I remember olddays with the TK50 drives that I used to clean the heads with alcohol swap everyweek... :)

[Lokesh_2]

Hi ,

As Henry has stated

"Some tapes were restored successfully But some tape were failed"

So, this points to tape problem , as the drive can restore some tapes successfully.

Thanks & regards,
Lokesh Jain

[Ian Miller.]

however Henry said 'I restored these tapes with no errors few weeks ago' so could be a tape drive problem.

Henry, can you post a selection of tape entries from the error log.

[Mohamed K Ahmed]

well, I think the best practice now is to take the tape that failed to another tape drive and try writing to it and see if errors arises.
The second thing, put a new tape in and try it.
I can say that 90% of these errors relate to the tape drive

Just trial and error

[Henry_52]

Hi everyone,

I restored these tapes to another server and restored successfully.
(I think Tape drive is not good so some tapes were restored and some tapes not.)

Thank you.

Henry

[Antoniov.]

Henry,
to work better with DAT tapes, periodically you need to initialize with /ERASE qualifier; in this way full tape cartdrige is written; notice this operation require much time.

Antonio Vigliotti

[Uwe Zessin]

Antonio,
what is the purpose? Retension the tape?

[Lawrence Czlapinski]

Henry, cleaning the DAT drives on a regular basis has almost eliminated this error on the DAT drives at my site.
On four of our DAT drives at my site, cleaning them before our monthly backups is sufficent.
On a fifth DAT drive, that has a weekly backup of 5 DAT tapes, cleaning it once a month wasn't sufficent. I clean that DAT drive before each weekly backup.
Lawrence