HP Ultrium 1840 Tape Drive Failing (HP MSL G3)

[gtmotive]

We are facing some issues when trying to use two recently added HP Ultrium 1840 FC Tape Drives (AJ042A) in our HP 8096 MSL G3 Library.

We already had other two with same model and reference. Networker & the library are able to detect all of them and their status is "ready". The only difference we can see is the firmware installed (H68W for the pair working properly & H6FW for the pair failing)

As additional information, the library firmware is 1100 / 3.20e

When we try to mount a new tape in this new recently added tape drives, Networker shows the following error and the operation is cancelled: "Jukebox: ....... failed: MOVE MEDIUM key:3 status: CH3CK CONDICION Media Error, Incompatible Medium Installed"

Does anybody know what may be happening or if the firmware could be the main cause of this issue?

Thanks in advance.

[AshrafK]

Hello There,

Non-Working pair tape drives LTO4 FC is at the latest firmware version. Looking at the error message reported by the EMC Networker ( version not mentioned), it seems incompatible tape was loaded.

Do both the tape drives report the same errors? What is the product number of the tape in use for backups? ( please look at the physical tape)

Are these errors reported with certain tapes ( like new ones)? 

Just for reference:

H68W 2011-06-13

H6FW 2014-08-18 ( latest available)

1200 2017-12-04 ( Robotics latest available)

[gtmotive]

Hello again,

Networker version is 7.6.5. Tapes product number is C7974A. 

Both tape drives report the same error. However, all tapes are working properly with the other 2 drives (H68W), so I guess the tapes should be OK.

Until now, mounting has failed in every recyclable tape we had. It doesn't matter if they are the latest ones we had bought or not.

[AshrafK]

Thank you for sharing the details.

Since you are using LTO4 generation drive, the LTO4 Generation tapes should not have read/write compatible issues.

But when you refer to the errors reported by the networker, it says “incompatible medium” which is not the case.

If you have tested these different tapes and the same error is reported, this is likely to be an issue with Networker.

In addition to that, I have validated the compatibility of the Networker Version with the MSL Generation units, 7.6.5 is not be listed. 9.0 and above are only tested. 

If this answers your questions and solves the problem,  and there are not outstanding queries, please close this thread so that other learners can benefit.