11d not working with any tape drive

[A_Lake]

Ok, so I have 11d on a clean install of Windows Server 2003. I've tried 2 seperate DDS4 tape drives and also a new LTO3 tape drive and cannot get BE11 to do anything other than perform an inventory.

Whenever I try to erase/catalog/backup I always get  'A hardware error has occured'

The tape drives have been connected to 2 different (seperate channel) SCSI cards (IBM ServerRaid) but the errors still occur.

Stupid thing is, if I persist and run the backup several times occasionally it will get as far as putting over 25Gb onto the tape before failing!

NTBackup works 100% fine with all three tape drives as well so I know they work - the drives have also been tested in another server and that works (apart from the LTO3)

About to give up on this one!

[CraigV]

Hi A,

You've got 2 drives attached to BEWS, which means it could be a licensing issue. BEWS will only work with 1 drive...any more, and you need additional licenses.
You can confirm this by removing 1 drive, and running your backups to the remaining hardware.
Furthermore, make sure Removable Storage service is stopped, as this causes issue with the way BEWS communicates with the hardware.

[A_Lake]

Sorry, I meant I've tried 2 different DDS drives and a single LTO3 drive - but only ever one at a time!

RSM is stopped and disabled. I've now put the original DDS drive back in (Drive number 1) and the errors are the same.

The setup now is that the DDS drive is on a seperate SCSI controller card to the drives and it still doesn't work

[Ken_Putnam]

Were you using the Symantec Drivers, or OEM drivers?

if you shut down all BackupExec services, does NTbackup see and access the drives OK?

[CraigV]

I'd then go with what Ken has suggested looking at.
Putting the drives on a separate SCSI card is the best option, and doesn't clash with transfer rates etc.

[A_Lake]

It was on a seperate scsi card, but now its back on the main card (seperate channel) as this made no difference.

Any of the drives work fine with NT Backup - done a backup and restore on all 3 drives.

Got the original DDS4 back in now, on the onboard scsi card and its just failed with the error 'block size being used is incorrect' - at least its a different error for a change!

This seems insanely difficult to get working, bog standard server, alledgedly supported drives and I've spent 4 days fiddling about just to get BE working!

[Ken_Putnam]

Not the exact error you have, but see


http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/190750.htm