All tapes are shown as cleaning media

[oldtrlrnr]

Running Backup Exec 12.5 on a Windows 2003 server, with a Compaq MSL5000 SDLT library with a single Quantum SDLT320 tape drive.  Backups had been running fine for a long time with no HW or SW changes, but a couple of weeks ago they started failing, and all 25 tapes in the library show as cleaning media; all these tapes are now showing up in the "Cleaning Media" media set, as well as in the media set I had set up for the backups.

The best explanation I've found for this problem so far is Symantec tech article 61720, which describes 4 possible causes, including defective tape drive, and explains that since cleaning tapes do not have header info, the drive considers any tape whose header it cannot read as a cleaning tape, and reports that back to BE.

I wonder if anyone else has had this problem, and if so, were you able to fix it without installing a new tape drive.

Appreciate any feedback.

Bob

[phartman]

I've seen this before.  Everytime it happened here, it has been a tape drive issue.  If you have a known scratch tape, you can use HPs Library and Tape tools to run some tests.  Those tests will confirm if it is a drive issue.

[Biker_Dude]

This is probably a bad tape drive issue.

Below is a recent posting from a customer with the same tape library that had the same problem.  He replaced the drive and it solved the problem:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/backupexec-12-sp3-showing-all-tapes-cleaning-tapes#comment-3114371

Maybe you can try cleaning the drive you have but you may want to contact HP for more help in this matter.