Media error

[Bob_303]

Dear all. I’m running Arcserve 9.1 on Novell 6.5 the problem is that when I put a tape in the drive (it’s sony ait 50 scsi drive) it takes about 10 minutes to initialise the tape and then it’s giving me a message “Media Error”. I have restarted the server and cleaned the tape drive few times but nothing has changed. I have tried brand new and old (with data) tapes and it makes no difference. Any help welcom

[Bob_303]

Sorry tape drive is "Compaq AIT 50".

[Cameron Todd]

Is the tape drive new, or have you been using it without problems until now?

Were the old tapes (with data) created on this same drive?

It sounds like the drive is faulty at this point.

[Bob_303]

Hello, thank you for replay. Iâ ve been using this drive for more than a year, and old tapes had been created on this drive and no configuration changes were made. I had problem with two new tapes (faulty media or something like that) but I did few backups onto old tapes after that. And then after restarting server it would not eject the tape and media error light was â onâ on the drive. After restarting server couple of times it did eject the tape and stopped working.
I guess Iâ ll have to look at driveâ s warranty documents.

[Cameron Todd]

doesn't sound too promising if the cleaner tape is resetting the error light ok but not fixing the drive read/write fault. Is the environment of the tape drive fairly cool and not too humid? (ie. less than 28 degrees celsius and humidity of 40% approximately as would be experienced by 24x7 airconditioning)
I don't know enough about ait drives to be able to comment more specifically.