DLT VS80 ejecting tape by itself

[Marc Riggs]

Does anyone know why this drive would eject the tape after approx. 1 minute by itself, or even how to fix it? Thank You

[timmy b.]

Marc,
Is it just one tape, or all of them?

[David Ruska]

Is it an unformatted or previously VS80 formatted tape, or DLT4000?

Any other tape format (e.g. DLT8000) is not recognized and not supported in a VS80 drive (unless it is degaussed).

Here's the users manual:
http://h200001.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/lpg29152/lpg29152.pdf

[Marc Riggs]

It is all tapes. The just replaced the drive in May and got all new tapes at that point. They have one for every day they are open. the cleacing cartridge was even ejected early.

[David Ruska]

Collect an L&TT support ticket, and we can look at the drive logs to see what errors are getting logged when the tapes are loaded. You can post the .ltt file here.

[Marc Riggs]

the lt&t couldn't even run, it said the drive was defective. Thank you for your help.

[JAKES VAN JAARSVELDT]

i'm having exactly the same problem, same hardware except our setup and components have not changed in 6 months, having no problems until yesterday.

this is pretty urgent.

thank you.

[Jaclyn Rothe]

Make sure you are not using a RAID scsi card and that your components are all compatible at:
hp.com/go/connect
I have seen this happen in unsupported configurations, where it works for 6 months then stops.
see:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=PSD_EX020516_CW01

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=lpg50063


ALSO, if your type IV tapes have ever been used in a different DLT technology (DLT 40 DLT 70 or DLT80) your VS 80 will eject the tapes. You need new unsued tapes cartridges or can try degausing the old tapes to see if the drive will accept them, although this is not a reliable way to erase media, and not really recommended,

Does the drive have any lights on the front panel? The drive might just need to be cleaned, use cleaning tape C7998A

[Christos Saliveros]

same here / drive ejects all tapes old and new / bad block reference at event viewer on device..

[David Ruska]

All,

Make sure you're using the right cleaning tapes. We just ran into a customer that was using DLT cleaning tapes on all their VS80 drives, and thought these were cleaning the drive (the tape loads for about 30 seconds).

The "right" tape is a odd medium brown color, not the cream color of the DLT cleaning tape.

Here are details (HP Part #s):

HP DLT Cleaning Cartridge (C5142A)
* Recommended for all DLT III & DLT IV compliant drives (Not Compatible with DLT1, DLT VS or SDLT drives)

HP DLT VS Cleaning Cartridge (C7998A)
* Recommended for all DLT1 and DLT VS compliant drives (Not compatible with DLT or SDLT drives )

Both are good for 20 cleanings.

I'll attach a picture to show the difference in color.

Lastly, here's a DLT/VS80/DLT1 cleaning tape reference doc:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=lpg50259

FYI, VS160 has it's own cleaning tape as well (I think they're white).

[Arend Lensen]

some DLT drives do an unload "please move handle" after a certain timeout but thats 10 minutes or so, to prevent cooking the handle solenoid, just fyi