Major issues with HP Ultrium-3 920 Tape Backup

[Gigi Fasole]

G'day to everyone.
As part of my new job, I was charged with the regular maintenance on the server, and part of that involves changing the cartdrige for the daily back-up every once in a while.
Being my first time I do that, I have pulled my notes, and tried to do this by the book, and disaster struck:
THe server is a HP Proliant, running Windows 2003 Server, with Symantec Backup Exec performing the daily backup.
Upon changing the cartdrige (I had a HP inside and replaced it with a Quantum), I inventoried the new media, and went for a backup test... which failed.
Realizing that the probable cause of failure was not assigning the cartdrige to the specific Media Set, I did just that... but no luck too.
Browsing the Internet, I found that there might be a problem with the media, so, I first did a Long erase (which failed after 5 hours, 0 minutes and 17 seconds), tried to eject the media (no success until I restarted the server, and ejected it before the Windows fully loaded), and ran L&TT.
L&TT reports that everything is fine and dandy, until I run an LTO Device Assessment test which ends with the worrying error: The drive is no longer reccomended for use, contact tech support (Which is a problem since the server is shipped from the US by the mother company).
Other than that, the Drive Performance Test hangs after writing 82 MB, and every 10 minutes or so, the L&TT hangs trying to access the drive so that the only solution is to restart the server.

Needless to say that I have tried 3 different Quantum cartdriges (The HP is the only on of it's type, and I have all the data on it, so I don't dare use it), and I've had no luck.

Please let me know if there is any way outta this, 'cos, as you may have noticed, the situation is kinda nasty.

Best regards.

[CPartee]

Do you currently have support on your LTO3 drive?

Have you ran a cleaning tape recently?

[Gigi Fasole]

Unfortunately, I don't benefit from a special tech support plan or any special form of assistance whatsoever (management decisions... don't they -- times....) I will try and contact tech support via email, and hope to get an answer, even though I can't seem to find the Ultrium 920 in the right section. .
On the other hand, the tape drive has only been in use for about three months, and the indicator telling me that it need cleaning has not been lit.
On other thing: after the drive hangs (like for example trying to do a long erase and getting no response), first it flashes all four leds (which is not covered in the manual) and then it shuts down and becomes invisible for the system (and the L&TT), unless I do a force eject.
I've talked to another techie in my department and he said that it might be the Quantum tapes (albeit all three of them) so tomorrow I'll put another HP LTO3 and try to see if it runs. If it's the tapes, it still bad 'cos they don't come cheap by Romanian standards.
Hope I can get an answer in forum, or from tech support.
Many thanks for your support.

[Curtis Ballard]

If you could use L&TT to pull a support ticket and attach that to a post here there may be additional information in that ticket that would help explain the problem.

[Gigi Fasole]

Here is the support ticket for the drive.
When it was extracted, the drive had a Quantum Tape in it.
Hope this helps.

P.S. I managed to find in ONE shop here an original LTO-3 tape, but it will only be available tomorrow. I'll go buy it, and will update the results in L&TT accordingly.

[Gigi Fasole]

I'm sorry and I don't mean to be a nuisance, but since I've generated the ticket, in the limited amount of time I could perform maintenance and restarts of the server, I haven't been able to access the drive AT ALL, meaning that I couldn't even eject the tape that was in there. The drive seems powered down, so I have no access on it. I have tried, force eject (10+ secs of pressing the eject button), bus reset (20+ secs of pressing the eject button), restarting the server, shutting down and restarting the server, and the drive SOMETIMES light up during the booting sequence, lighting first the green led, and then flashing all four of them at the same time.
I am VERY eagerly waiting for a solution outta this, because I think that having these issues with a drive that is three months old makes it (for me at least) a huge reliabilty issue, considering the fact that the same back-up works VERY fine on a 3-4 years old, USB-connected IOMEGA hard-drive.

[Curtis Ballard]

It sounds like it's time to call HP tech support. The drive is under warranty no matter how far you are from your home office.

The behavior you describe now sounds like a power up self test failure. Possibly some problem with the power supply that the tape drive is connected to or maybe something failed in the drive.

The support ticket didn't provide a lot of useful information. It had some strange power up count values suggesting that it had been power cycled a lot more times than normal and that there had been large numbers of power cycles with no activity between them but when it was powered up the activity looked OK other than one failed test which said to retry with another tape to determine if it was the drive or tape at fault.