Abnormal DAT160 tape wear

[BERTRAND LETEMPLIER]

Hi.

Sold to one of our customers an SCSI DAT160 tape drive, installed in an HP ML350 G5.

1st tape drive unit had to be exchanged (and tapes also) by HP after a few days as it was "burning" the tapes at 1st use.

Now on the second unit (in use since Sep 2008), we have very high wear rate on the DAT160 tapes.
On 20 brand new DAT160 tapes, 4 had to be put away as giving write errors.

Cleaning tape is used once a week and when required by drive light or RSM message.

OS: W2K3R2
Backup method: NTBackup plus scripting for Label handling through RSM.

When it works, speed is good (about 40 minutes for 20 GB), no streaming problem.

Latest available firmware was installed on tape drive.

Any ideas ?

[TapeDrive Killer 1 2]

please run LTT and attach a support ticket

Pablo Alvarado Siles