HP Colorado 20GB won't recognize tapes

[Chris Blackmore]

I have an HP Colorado 20GB Travan drive with two 20GB Travan tapes. When I go to do a backup, the software recognizes the drive but won't see either tape. It's been a while since I've used the drive, and I think perhaps it's a bit dusty inside. I've been reading the other posts that suggest "retensioning the tape several times" to clean the device. Sounds like a great idea... the problem is, the Windows XP Backup Utility won't let me retension a tape unless the drive sees it. It's a kind of catch-22, you see. There are no other problems with the tapes as far as I can tell. The windows are clean, there's no gunk on them, they've been stored well. Any suggestions?

[Mohammed Ali_2]

Hi,

You didn't mention whether your tape drive is internal or external.

Read on:

If you have HP Colorado 20 GB internal XP is supported. But if you have HP Colorado 20 GB external you'll require the additional installation of an appropriate shuttle-port driver.

To download the shuttle driver and for more info search for the following document on HP.com

lpg10092

As for the cleaning, it's retention for "cleaning" the tape, and blowing compressed air onto drive sensor to clean the drive itself.

You can also run tapediag to test your drive. Do a search for tapediag on hp.com and run the test.

Hope this helps you. Thanks

Mohammed

[Mr. Dean]

Any colorado drive is not really supported on XP, they 'can' work but it's not guaranteed. Unfortunately, XP came out long after the Travan drives stopped being supported. So no actual updates were made for these drives and XP.

If you're using NT backup or CBII on XP that may give you issues...in most cases, I've seen it can backup fine and not restore or vice-versa. You might want to look into Tapeware (www.tapeware.com)and try the trial version...see if that helps or makes any difference.

What Mohammed had suggested (hardware wise) was also correct.

[Munir_1]

Take a look here this might be helpful:

http://h20015.www2.hp.com/hub_search/document.jhtml?lc=en&docName=c00000627

[Bob_196]

trying loading the CBII version 9.1 for ME on XP - it has been shown to work - in CBII under tools - media choose retention...

also the easiest thing to try is another tape - sice you onky have two tapes I imagine they've been used quite a bit - most backup rotations have one tape for each day of the week which the cycle out after approx 2 yrs (most tapes are only garunteed for 100 backups)

cheers