DAT24 Media Failed to mount error

[Dwayne_12]

Hello there. I have recently acquired a C1537a drive. I'm using NT backup on Xp. It uses dds 2 tapes fine. It is supposed to use dds3 tapes but when I run a test backup of say 14 gb the backup starts but then after 20 mins the software stops responding and my system hangs completely. I then decided to install LTT using latest firmware, drivers and even flashing scsi bios Adaptec 29160N. The LTT read\write, media validation tests are successful, but whenever I kick a backup job off I get "The requested media failed to mount. The operation was aborted." Please can you help, this is a HP brand dds 3 tape which is brand new cost me ??10,it should be able to hold 24gb compressed data. I have cleaned the drive numerous times and I am completely at a loss as to why I can't back up to it anymore. I have attached a LTT support ticket, which I hope can help. Many thanks.

[CA843380]

Hi Dwayne,

I can't read your support ticket. Can you zip up the *.ltt ticket file and attach the zipped file please.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar.

[Dwayne_12]

Hi Dave,
Here's the Ltt file zipped up as requested. I hope it can shed some light on my problem.
regards
Dwayne

[Lewis Finch]

Try running a calibration script. From LTT, select Utilities and run script. Browse the script folder for a file called ddsWriteRecal.ssc. Run this script on you drive to see if it helps recalibrate the read write head.

[CA843380]

Hi Dwayne,

You drive is having problems writing DDS3 format reliably. There are lots of 84 errors in you fault log which indicate write issues.

As Lewis suggests, try the writecal script.

If this doesn't work, run a write/read test from within LTT and post the results here.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar.

[Dwayne_12]

Lewis - I've tried recalibrating the drive using the write cal script. After the operation results at the end mentioned that my drive was already at its optimum. I did notice however that the orange led light continued to flash forever afterwards. Even when it finished. It only stopped when I put a tape in and then ejected it. And I also noticed that future device analysis test results started to recommend recalibrating the heads which I had already attempted.
Dave - The read\write tests seem to be successful, I've attached a zipped up log of the results, for your perusal.
regards
Dwayne

[CA843380]

Hi Dwayne,

Your write and read error rates look fine.

I would try the drive on NTbackup and see if it works now.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar.

[Dwayne_12]

Hi Dave,
I know the read\write test is successful but that's what the problem is - the drive still refuses to mount the media. I forgot to mention that I do get another error message prior to the mount error which states that "unrecognised media has been found" I've taken a screen grab of both the error messages so you can see. Whatever I do it just wont take this tape. And it's never been used before it's brand new. I'm sure I've tried everything. Please help!!
regards
Dwayne

[CA843380]

Hi Dwayne,

Thanks for the attachment. I didnt read your original message properly it seems.
To summarise: you are using win XP NT backup. You can format and backup/restore using DDS2 tapes with this tape drive with no problems.
However, when you use the DDS3 tape you have bought, and NT backup gives you the option to format the tape, when you say yes, NT backup comes back later with the "requested media has failed to mount" error.

You have the latest 29160N bios and the latest C1537 firmware installed. You have run LTT device analysis, write/read test and writecal script using your DDS3 tape and have had no problems. The error rates on write/read test with the DDS3 tape look fine.

I am puzzled as to why you are getting this NT backup error. The obvious reason why you might get it is because the drive is have problems formatting the tape and exceeds the timeout allowed, however, we know the write/read performance appears to be good on LTT with this DDS3 tape.

Are you sure that DDS2 tapes still work?

I know its a pain to generate more data but could you do the following:

1. Try a short backup on a DDS2 tape with NTbackup to ensure this still works.
2. Start NTbackup and insert your DDS3 tape. Backup should prompt you to reformat and maybe you will get the same error. When this happens close down NTbackup do the following:
a. look in the win xp event viewer and look for recent entries in the appl and system log for NTbackup. You might see one of these logging the error you have seen. Post what you see here. b. Start up LTT. Ensure the tape is loaded in the drive and grab a support ticket and post it here.
This way we should be able to see if the drive is looging any error during the NTbackup op.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar.

[Dwayne_12]

Hi Dave,
I will try this over the weekend and get back to you with the results.
Thanks
Dwayne

[Dwayne_12]

Hi Dave,
I have followed exactly what you have said. First of all when I use a DDS2 tape I can successfully backup, but I can't seem to backup anything more than 2.71gb on it. I'm using compression so I should be able to backup a lot more than that. DDS2 can take up to 8gb. Why does it complain that it's out of space so soon?Especially when I have compression on?
As for the DDS3 tape. I tried this twice. I loaded NTbackup
then put the tape in. It took a while before it prompted to format it, with which I selected yes. I then created a tiny backup job and when I click on finish I get the same error about unable to mount media. The event viewer didn't log any errors. Only the successful backup of the DDS2 tape. I thought I would try it again. But I was unable to load NTBackup for some reason the process NTbackup.exe was running but not appearing on the screen. So I had to reboot to get it to successfully load. On the second attempt the NTBackup did not prompt to format the tape. So I went ahead in starting a small backup anyway- then I received the same Media failed to mount error. I've genearted another support ticket for your perusal. I can't see anything in the event\system logs which logs the media mount error. However, I did receive an error in the app log about NT backup but this was related to the out of space error when the DDS2 backup - which I mentioned before, complained about the lack of space. I had to overwrite the media to get it to work. This is the app log result for that error:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: NTBackup
Event Category: None
Event ID: 8019
Date: 10/06/2003
Time: 17:51:52
User: N/A
Computer: DWAYNE
Description:
End Operation: Warnings or errors were encountered.
Consult the backup report for more details.
Hope this info helps.
regards
Dwayne

[CA843380]

Hi Dwayne,

Your support ticket does show another error now compared to the previous one you posted, an E7 error "unable to locate target" when performing a load or unload which indicates your drive was having problems finding its position on tape. Your DDS3 media could be the problem and since you only have one its a bit tricky to verify this. Of course, the support ticket does not actually tell me when this error occurred so it could be anytime between the first support ticket and the second, and you have done a lot with your drive since then.

I see from your profile that you are UK based. Post an email contact address and I'll contact you about sending you a fresh DDS3 tape to see if we can rule out the tape.

The latest support ticket shows that your drive is set as hardware compression disabled, I dont know whether this was true with the DDS2 backup you ran though. The previous support ticket had this set as enabled. In the compression section of the ticket it is also indicating that you are getting a compression ratio of less than 1. What sort of data were you backing up? DDS2 tapes hold 4GB native, 8GB at 2:1 compression. Two possible reasons why you might not get 4GB on the tape are: a. you are trying to compress already compressed data such as jpegs, zip archives, this can expand the data, running software and hardware compression will also do this, b. you are losing space on tape due to rewrites because of poor write performance, your support tickets hows a history of 84 errors, but unfortunately there is nothing it the logs to tell me whether those errors occurred with DDS2 or DDS3 operations.

There is another thing you could try in the meantime.

If you right click on "my computer" and select manage, you should see an option within the computer management console to select removable storage tree. You can use the removable storage manager to manage your drives and media rather than do it from NTbackup to see if there is some issue with NTbackup that is causing the issue. Open the tree and select physical locations to see the C1537. If you have the DDS3 tape in the drive, you should see it under media and you can try preparing mounting, dismounting, ejecting and the media by right clicking on the media.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar.

[Dwayne_12]

Hi Dave,

With regards to the compression. You're right I am backing up lots of pictures (jpg) files which I take with my digital camera. Are you saying that it is right to get a compression ratio of less than one? because of this? I'm also not aware of turning compression off. How do I enable it again? A lot of the errors in the logs are due to the DDS2 tape complaining that there is not enough space left on the tape. The media mount error with the DDS3 tape doesn't even get logged.
As for the computer management option. I can see the C1537a device, and I can eject the tape successfully without a hitch, but there isn't much option to do anything else. I've attached a screen grab of the image I see. It shows the tape mounted on no 16. But I can't find the option to dismount or mount. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
I'm getting quite frustrated with all of this. I can't get my best tape to work and with the DDS2 I have, it won't backup any more than 2.7 gb of data. Is my tape drive faulty?
regards
Dwayne

[CA843380]

Hi Dwayne,

If you have compression turned on in the drive and are backing up already compressed data such as jpegs then data expansion can occur and you will get a compression ratio of less than 1.

As to why it now appears to be disabled, I am not sure, sometimes the backup app can do this. Unfortunately, the NTbackup app does not give you an option to turn harwdare compression on and off, other backup apps do, but since you are backing up jpegs, you want it off.

I was using win2k RSM option and assumed the winxp would be the same, win2k gives you more options such as mount and dimount when you right click. It appears winxp is not the same :-). The fact that win xp is reporting the meida as mounted is good, and hence I don't know why NTbackup is having problems mounting it.

I can understand you frustration. I am not sure whether you drive is faulty, it works fine with DS2 under NTbackup and DDS2 works ok in LTT. You have a couple of options,
1. You can ring HP support in the UK. Even if your drive is out of warranty (more than 3 years from data of purchase) the call is free and they will help as best as they can with advice etc etc. If you drive is in warranty, less than three years old, they should offer you an exxhange if they can't fix your issue and the drive appears to be the problem.
2. Continue trying to solve this issue using this forum, although I don't think we are making much progress. I really want to help you out here, but its proving a tricky problem to solve, we can move onto email.
3. I am going to contact you by email anyway and offer to send you a couple of DDS3 tapes to see if a new tape works better.
4. you could try updating your tape driver and seeing if NTbakcup now works.

Try, http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?pnameOID=12188&locale=en_US&taskId=135&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=42846&cc=us#Microsoft%20Windows%202000%20Server

and download and intall the WindowsDriver for HP Surestore DAT Tape Drives 2003-3-25
v1.05.0.1, this will replace the 4mmdat.sys driver winxp uses with hpdat.sys. I have heard reports of issues with the default winxp 4mmdat.sys driver and winxp.

As I said, I'll contact you by email and ask for a mailing address for the tapes.

Cheers,

Dave Dewar.

[Cameron Campbell]

Hi. Is anyone able to tell me if there was a resolution to this issue. It looks to me like I am having exactly the same problem with my backups. I have a C1533A running with either NTbackup or Seagate Backup Exec. Both backup routines now just spend ages winding the tapes back and forth before eventually coming up with Media Failed to Mount error. I have tried with several tapes both blank and previous backups with no success.
Regards

[BR759254]

Maybe this is a ntbackup issue.
I have a similar problem with a Windows 2000 Server with a non-hp internal tape drive using ntbackup.
When I change the tape it usually does not refresh the inventory so when the backup runs it does not see the tape - its looking for yesterday's.
If I manually "inventory" the drive, that night's backup runs fine.

[Dwayne_12]

I am still receiving "unable to mount media error messages".
I know my dds3 tapes are fine and error also occurs on certain dds 2 tapes as well. I have only two dds2 tapes which my drive seems to like. All the tests pass so why can't my drive mount the media?
Is there perhaps some way, or different software which I can use to manually format my tapes? NT backup doesn't seem to offer many options.

[BR759254]

If you go into Computer Manager and Removeable Storege, highlight your tape device, does the currently installed tape show in the right pane?
If not, the inventory is wrong.
In any event the ntbackup log should shed some light on your problem.

Cheers,
Gordon

[Dwayne_12]

Hi Gordon,
I follow your instructions and I can see the currently installed tape in the right panel.
The details are as follows:
Name = 31
Type = 4mm dds
Library = HP c1537a scsi sequential device
State = Idle
Mounted side = 1
Usage = free
The ntbackup log shows nothing except the same old error message "Backup Status
The requested media failed to mount. The operation was aborted."
Whenever, this occurs, NTBackup crashes and I always have to restart my PC to get the software to load properly. I'm at a complete loss, I'm sure I've tried everyhting and I also get the same problem with new DDS2 tapes as well. Yet the tests always pass with flying colours. I only have two DDS2 tapes which my drive seems to like and they're identical to the same DDS2 tapes that don't work. That's what is so puzzling. DDS3 tapes seem to be a no go except my drive is compatible and they also pass tests as well, but with same results as DDS2. Do you have any other ideas?

[CA1045622]

I remember having some of the same problem. Try opening ntbackup from the command line using the /nopoll switch. c:>ntbackup /nopoll.
From here you should be able to reformat the tape to where the drive can then use it. Good Luck...