SDLT 320 Parity Errors

[jjinva]

We have an ES47 VMS 7.3-1 with 2 HP SDLT 320 tape drives. Since going live with the System in Feb 05 we have experienced a significant number of Parity errors when initializing the tapes. HP tech support has been out and we have swapped tape drives, tried different brand tapes, cables etc... Problem persists. Cannot find anything wrong with the hardware.

The Field Engineer spoke with his support and he was told that they see alot of tape edge problems and tapes need to be handled and stored carefully. Which we do.

These same tapes work fine on the Windows servers. Any ideas why we get so many parity errors?

[Volker Halle]

jjinva,

do you only get those errors during an INIT command ? Did you look at and compare the OpenVMS errlog entries and find out more details ?

Volker.

[Jeffrey Goodwin]

We have about a 10% fallout on new SDLT tapes. This crosses multiple Operating Systems, Drive/Jukebox vendors, and many different tape brands. Some tapes fail at initialization, some during backups. We have very few failures with tapes once they've gone through a backup.

I don't have any good answers for you as we're similarly frustrated.

As far as handling the tapes is concerned, unless you're kicking and throwing them, I can see how that is causing any issues.

-Jeff

[Charles Whealton]

I'm responding to Jeff's reply on this one:

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We have about a 10% fallout on new SDLT tapes. This crosses multiple Operating Systems, Drive/Jukebox vendors, and many different tape brands. Some tapes fail at initialization, some during backups. We have very few failures with tapes once they've gone through a backup.

I don't have any good answers for you as we're similarly frustrated.

As far as handling the tapes is concerned, unless you're kicking and throwing them, I can see how that is causing any issues.
----


Guys, I have to tell you that I find this extremely troubling. I'm going through the SAME THING here. This is utilizing an MSL5026S2 library with two SDLT320 tape drives. We use Legato NetWorker as our backup product. We've had the library for a couple of years now. Strangely enough, this thing was virtually FLAWLESS for the first year. The best thing since sliced bread and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why other forum posts I read back then were complaining about problems with them.

After that first year, look out. We had to get both tape drives replaced at once (just for starters) and the trouble hasn't stopped yet.

It happens with brand new tapes, different vendors (though only a few probably make the tapes), tapes that haven't been used THAT much (we're talking once per year). As is Jeff's case, we're definately NOT throwing our tapes around, they're packed in padded boxes, etc.

I see this as a problem with the technology - not sure if it's the tape, drive units, or a combination of both yet, though I'm leaning towards the tapes themselves.

Whenever I ask HP if there are known problems I'm always told NO and given the "tape edge" story. That's not good enough.

I've got a new MSL6026 with two SDLT600 drives that I'm about to put into production (bought it a year ago). I wonder if I'm going to go through the same problems with that one...

Charles R. Whealton

[Rene Stanger]

Hello,

we had a similar problem with our SDLT 320. It worked well for 2 years, then it had to be changed. The new one sometimes worked, sometimes it didn't. So we called the support again and they changed the tape. It did not work at all! So we asked for a OpenVMS specialist and "veni vidi vici". What did he do?
He added a scsi-terminator to our external tapedrive. Why? In the "HP-World" the scsi-devices are equiped with a self terminating thing, but in the old "DEC-World" every device had to be properly terminated and the technicans had to verify this.

Maybe this can help you too...

Regards
Rene Stanger