Trouble with tape drive

if a tape drive starts to ask for cleaning tape again and again, or the drive has a problem or there is a problematic tape.

If the previous days the same tape was used, change the tape as first troubleshooting step. It is better to test the drive with a new tape.

if you need to change the tape drive, do the following.

• write down the density of the faulty drive (hcart or hcart2 or hcart3)
• delete the old tape drive from netbackup, and disconnect it from the server
• connect the new drive to the server and check that it is viewable from the OS. (install driver if required)
• run the device installation wizard from the netbackup GUI and configure the drive to netbackup
• check the density of the new drive and, if need it, correct the density to match the density of the faulty drive ( from media and device management -> devices -> drives, right click and select properties).
• no other steps needed. Run a backup to test the drive.

With standalone tape drives you do not have to mount the tape that is requested, instead you can load any tape wihich is writeable - i.e. any tape in the same pool as being requested, of the same retention (assuming mixed retentions is not enabled), which still has space, which is not write-locked - or instead is a scratch tape from the ScratchPool.

If you want A00006 to cease being requested, then just delete volume A00006, or create a new pool named 'BadMedia' and manually assign A00006 to the 'BadMedia' pool.