BE 12 kept causing end or marker on tapes

[oithim_yew]

All my backups are currently failing as the jobs are causing the end of marker on every tapes in the autoloader. we have replace the drive and the autoloader as well but the problem still persist. the backup runs and then stops after a few MB's of data written and then the tape will be ejected from the drive back to the slots with end of marker stated. we have replace the drive and autoloader, new tapes and create new jobs, but the job still failing out of sudden, any ideas on this as I am totally out of ideas now.

[CraigV]

Hi,

Check the TN below and se if this helps:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH37091

Thanks!

[oithim_yew]

CraigV,

Done the things stated but still the same, drive diagnostics are fine as well.

[VJware]

One of the common reasons for this to occur was backup failure due to loss of network connection. I believe from BE 2012 onwards, if the backup fails for such reasons (loss of network, bengine failure), the tapes will not be marked - end marker unreadable.

In your version of BE, would recommend to troubleshoot as to why the backups are failing. Fixing the backup failure will stop the tapes being marked as end marker unreadable.

[Larry_Fine]

Generally, when a tape gets marked as "end marker unreadable" that is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself.

The root cause is that the backup got interrupted, typically with a communication issue.  When BE tried to append to the tape the next time a job selected it, it cannot find the proper end marker and then tags the tape as unappendable, due to end-marker-unreadable.  So, there is often a delay between twhen the bad thing happened and when the tape gets tagged as end-marker-unreadable.