Storageworks 1/8 Autoloader

[John Rowan_2]

I have three HP 1/8 DLT autoloaders.  They were backing up religously until a month ago.  I have ~ 150 tapes in the library I rotate through.  A month ago they would get fatal write error and and exclamation point would appear on the LCD for each tape as it encountered the error.  Even though the clean drive light wasn't on I cleaned anyway but no change.  I've tried 30 plus tapes in the three units, same errors on all.  I even applied a firmware upload to one hoping that would resolve but it did not.  The tapes vary how long I retain, some for a week, some for a month, some for a year.  It doesn't make sense to me that all the tapes or the three units went bad all at once.  

Anyone have a suggestion?

[Prakash Singh_1]

Hello,

This can be because the cartridge inventory is not valid because of manual changes or previous fatal errors.

You can try to Update the inventory using the Re-inventory option in the Commands menu or power cycle.

Steps:

1. From the Home Screen or Main menu, press + or - until Commands displays on the top line of the LCD screen. Press Enter to select.
2. Press + or - until Re-inventory displays on the LCD screen. Press Enter to select.
3. The autoloader will check the drive and each slot for the presence of a tape in order to update the inventory information.

[John Rowan_2]

I did the re-inventory, ran backup which writes data to 5 tapes, no change, write failure terminating each of the 5 sessions the longest being just over an  hour.    Normally runs from 8PM Friday night until 7AM Saturday morning, terminated early at 02:52.

[John Rowan_2]

Ran re-inventory on both 1/8 autoloaders, ran backup, both failed.  I also have a DLT VS80 stand alone tape on the same SCSI channel.  That has no trouble writing to the same tapes the autoloaders mysteriously have been failing with.