Tape ejects when verifying a backup

[Douglas Doole]

I've got a DAT 72 internal USB tape drive (C7438A) running DPX SSE 3.50 sp2 under Linux. It has been working fine for a couple years, but I've recently been having problems when taking a backup.

The backup I'm taking fits on a single tape (around 26 GB of data). The backup completes, but the automatic verify makes it part way through the tape then ejects the tape and prompts for another media (as if it was a multi-tape backup).

The problem doesn't seem to be happening at any one particular place. I've seen it eject anywhere between 5% verified and 80% verified and it even occasionally completes successfully.

I have tried cleaning the drive and using several different tapes, but the problem still occurs. I have run LTT and it doesn't report any problems with the drive. However when I choose the LTT option to validate data on the tape, it stops early (which seems to imply that the tape wasn't written correctly).

Any suggestions?

[TapeDrive Killer 1 2]

This is probably a hardware problem try a verify job alone.

Pablo Alvarado Siles

[Douglas Doole]

Thanks for the suggestion. I did the backup/verify followed immediately by two separate verify passes.

On the backup/verify, the tape was ejected at 23% complete. The verify passes ejected at 4% and 24%. I also noticed a lot of verification errors (60-80% of the files are not verifying correctly).

Any other suggestions, or is it time to get this drive serviced?

[TapeDrive Killer 1 2]

you cal also try to test the hardware using LTT or try a different USB port

www.hp.com/support/tapetools

Pablo Alvarado Siles