Ultrium 920 filling tape at 280GB of 282GB

[Michael McKenney]

assessment tests failed on old drive. I cleaned the drive 5x. Used a new tape. Luckily it was under warranty. I was shipped a new one. I can't understand how part of LTT showed everything was fine. Took a while to get proof it was the drive.

[Richard Bickers]

This is good feedback. Which part of LTT was saying the drive was good. Is this the ticket? Do you still have it?

Thanks, Richard (LTT PM).

[Michael McKenney]

I will check to see if I still have the old files.

[Forrest Mook]

Hi Richard, I don't want to hijack Michael McKenney's thread with my own problems, but I still have my log files if you'd like them. They are attached. We did run the LTO Assessment test while I was working with HP Tech Support. The test stopped after about 6 minutes and simply said "Test incomplete, try another tape" (it was a brand new tape). The tech didn't seem to have a problem with this and we didn't re-run the test.

This wasn't enough to get tech support to agree to replace the drive. Finally I got the tech to remotely connect to the machine to see exactly what was happening and with some 3GB test files it was using anywhere from 7 to 9GB of the tape (random amounts each time).

Anyway, I still have the defective drive installed because I am waiting on a replacement, so if there is anything else you'd like me to do on it I'll be happy to.

[Forrest Mook]

And just to add closure to my comments on this. I received my replacement Ultrium 920 today for my 1x8 G2 autoloader and it fixed my tape capacity problem.

[Michael McKenney]

Forrest, be my guest to add your results. Users will find it helpful.

[Richard Bickers]

forrest, I don't seem to be able to download the attachment. If you could send to our CPE team at ltt.team@hp.com I can take a look that way.

Was it the support ticket that was showing everything fine? Do you have any support tickets left around - postfix .lzt?

Thanks, Richard.

[Richard Bickers]

I got them in the end - had to use FireFox!

Main thing I was looking for was a general reduction in performance off all heads at once. That's a sign of general contamination rather than a piece of debris.

Please make sure your area is clean. Try rubbing your finger over a nearby filter - see what comes off as that's what's working it's way into your drive over time.

The drives are very good with organic debris but construction dust, printers and cigarette smoke can do nasty things to the heads.

[Forrest Mook]

Thanks for the advice Richard, I appreciate it. I'll keep an eye on the environment, the tape drive and server are located in the wiring closet of one of my buildings here, away from people, printers, etc... It's not a completely dust free environment, but it's about as close to one as I can get.

Just as an aside, the tape drive/autoloader have not once ever prompted me to run a cleaning tape. Should I be using a cleaning tape periodically regardless of whether it ever asks me to?

Thanks
Forrest

[Richard Bickers]

We don't recommend running a cleaning tape regularly but I have to say I think the cleaning light comes on less often than it should. Not an easy balance to strike as it turns out.

A couple of suggestions:
1) Pull an LTT support ticket from time to time as that will analyse the internals of the drive and give you a bit of notice if things are going south. LTT can also suggest using the cleaning tape.
2) If you're running Windows 2003/2008 and are using LTO 3 or later, then you should be able to make use of HP TapeAssure which is coming out in April. It uses LTT to monitor your drives and gives you early warnings along with performance and utilisation information. And it's free.