HPE LTO-7 15000 External not writing to tape

[kylestauffer]

Hey guys- I have a LTO-7 Ultrium 15000 external drive that I use for archiving old files and media. It's always just worked. I tried to write a new archive to it today and it says no tape in drive (there is, i've tried 4 brand new in the wrapper tapes). It's seen on my Mac and appears to be communicating. The cleaning light ends up flashing so i've run a new cleaning tape in it twice. It will reset but always does it again. I tried to download new firmware but it looks like I have to have some exhaustive and confusing entitlement licenses or something just to download it. 

Any ideas??

[ColetteH]

I do suggest that you download new firmware.  Do you call support within HPE to get help with entitlelment?

You can install and run L&TT on the new tape.  This software can be downloaded without entitlement.

[Mahesh202]

Hi kylestauffer

Firmware needs to be downloaded. Hence I request to use the HPE passport account to sign in and download the file for to update it.

If drive is rejecting tape, then I request you to get in touch with the Tech support team to analyse it.

Is the drive recognizing tapes or is it failing at just specific tape media?

Cleaning light flashing means that drive heads need to be cleaned.

I would like to now that how are you tracking the cleaning cycles on the cleaning tape.

Run the cleaning tape 2-3 times consecutively and then use a brand new tape to run a read/write test.
Then try to write a backup and restore from it. If this works, it might be likely that the drive heads were contaimated, they got cleaned with cleaning tape but possible contamination due to stale/damaged/contaminated media.

Regards
Mahesh202