DAT40x6 firmware nightmare with replacement drive

[CA1265488]

Last week I had a problem with a customer's DAT40x6. I had to send it to HP to repair it.

Unfortunately, HP doesn't repair anything anymore, so I got a new drive.

So far, so good (I won't discuss the huge bill here ...).

I brought the server down, attached the new drive, started the server up again. The drive was recognized by the controller. BUT: ARCserve (6.6 NW) didn't recognize the drive anymore ("There are no changers attached to the system")!

After a lengthy check I discovered that the problem was the new firmware in the drive. The old firmware described the drive as "HP C5713A", the new firmware as "HP 20/40GB DAT 6 AL", which wasn't in the tapelist of the old ARCserve.

Since ARCserve 6.6 NW isn't supported anymore, there is no chance to get an updated TAPELIST.DAT from CA. So it cost me a whole night editing binary files and downing/restarting the server to get the drive functioning again.

Is this really neccessary? I recognize the need for firmware changes, but why is there a need to change the SCSI messages as well? And why doesn't HP tell the customers beforehand?

When I asked HP, they told me it was my problem and I had to update the backup software! This would have meant for the customer to shell out about 25000 Euros for: a new ARCserve Enterprise Edition, a new ARCserve Tape Library Option, a new ARCserve Disaster Recovery option, a new ARCserve Open File Agent, 50 new ARCserve Client Agents, a new NetWare 6.5 50 user (because ARCserve 11.1 doesn't support NetWare 5.1 anymore), and a new server (because NetWare 6.5 has higher hardware requirements). And all this because a 2 year old drive has failed which shouldn't have failed in the first place!

Of course HP couldn't return the old drive to me (I wanted to change it back and repair it myself - it was only a robotic defect).

So if I hadn't succeeded in editing the binaries, the customers would have shelled out 1500 Euros + tax for an effectively unusable replacement drive.

Is this called "support"?

And how do I tell the customer that he has to pay for 12 hours of my time just to get a replacement drive running?

And now the REAL question (sorry for blowing steam):
The old drive ran with 65K block size, the new drive runs with 1K. This is of course coded into the TAPELIST.DAT and cannot be changed in ARCserve device manager. Does anybody out there know which bit to change for changing the block size?

Thx in advance
Fussel