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BE 2012 - All of a sudden 'incompatible media' error on all of our tapes

twshelpdesk
Level 4

Hi all,

 

A few days ago, out of the blue all of our backups/scheduled inventory jobs started failing with 'multiple errors'.

 

After looking a bit deeper into the job log, I can see that all of our tapes (including cleaning media) are marked as:

 

"incompatible media

Incompatible media has been detected in the slot. The most likely causes for this error are: The library or tape drive hardware is reporting an incompatible media error, or the library has Barcode rules enabled and a Barcode rule does not exist for the Barcode in the slot, or there is no tape drive in the library that is compatible with the media in the slot as specified by the matching Barcode rule."

 

We have not setup/changed any barcode rules and as I understand it in BE2012 this needs to be done by command line, so its not like this is something that we could accidently change!

 

I have tried rebooting the server and tape drive several times and have also tried to delete the Robotic Library from BE and re-add it, but we keep getting the same problem.

 

Your help is appreciated!

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

CraigV
Moderator
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...that should be your confirmation that if the diagnosic utility is throwing out errors, then the hardware is stuffed.

Thanks!

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8 REPLIES 8

CraigV
Moderator
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Hi,

 

Download your tape dirve vendor's hardware diagnostic utility and run the diagnostic tests for health against the drive. This will show whether or not you have any hardware issues on the unit.

Thanks!

twshelpdesk
Level 4

Just tried that and it asked me to insert a tape in the I/O slot (we have an IBM TS3100 Library) as part of the test.

 

It reported back that the tape is faulty :(

 

Im just trying to update the firmware on both the library and drive to see if it makes any difference.

 

 

Artegic
Level 6

Sounds like your drive is defective. If you're lucky it just needs a cleaning. If you're not so lucky it will need to be replaced. Hope you have maintenance for that device.

CraigV
Moderator
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...sounds like it is more of an issue with the library itself. Don't forget to stop all the BE services first, as BE maintains a lock on the hardware.

Thanks!

twshelpdesk
Level 4

Thanks for the help guys, its certainly sounds like the drive is dying.

The library originally had 2 drives, 1 died in a different way about 6 months ago but we managed to limp on with just 1 drive as we dont have maintenance for it :( (its not our main backup solution)

In my oppinion, this IBM library has been shockingly low quality.

I will try some cleaning/further diagnositcs and hope that we can squeeze a bit more life out of it.

CraigV
Moderator
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...may be time to look at another vendor's tape solution (ie. HP StorageWorks MSL2024 G3) or putting in a disk array/NAS as primary backup wit a secondary backup to another array or smaller tape drive.

Thanks!

twshelpdesk
Level 4

I think you are right....

Just to confirm, that I have tried to clean the drive - but it just throws back errors that the cleaning tape is defective :(

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

...that should be your confirmation that if the diagnosic utility is throwing out errors, then the hardware is stuffed.

Thanks!