BE 9.1 & Ultrium 960

[Dennis_Wolff]

Hi,
This is a little lengthy so please bear with me.

A question that has me stumped. I have an HP Ultrium 960 tape drive attached to an HP Proliant ML350 G3 running Windows 2003 Server Std. via an Adaptec 29320ALP PCI SCSI card. Installed fine, no problems. Using BE 9.1 I created a media set and a backup job utilizing this new equipment. Backup job ran fine, even remote selections.

Next day I moved the paging file on this server from the root C: volume to the E: volume and the backup failed with the following messages. Note that I left the minimum suggested 200 MB paging file on the root C: volume for memory dump purposes.

BE message: Storage device has reported an error on a request to read data from media. Error reported: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.

Event log message:
Event ID: 11
Source: adpu320
Description: The driver detectedc a controller error on \Device\Scsi\adpu3201.

Although logic told me (erroniously) the move of the paging file shouldn't have anything to do with this that is exactlly what ended up being the case. When I eventually moved the paging file back to the root C: volume the problem ceased.

My question: Is it the small paging file left on C: that caused the problem and if NO paging file existed then the paging file on the other volume would work fine? I intend to test this theory myself but wondered if anybody else out there has encountered this. I can find absolutely NOTHING in Symantec knowledge base regarding the paging file.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Guest_User]

> Event ID: 11
> Source: adpu320
> Description: The driver detectedc a controller error
> on \Device\Scsi\adpu3201.

I have a nearly identical setup. The error you're getting has nothing to do with the pagefile.

>Storage device has reported an error
>on a request to read data from media.

There's your problem. There was a problem reading the tape - not the hd. And when you used a different tape the next day, the problem disappeared.

> Is it the small paging file left on C:
> that caused the problem

I have a 32MB pagefile on c: and have never had the problem you describe.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=154690

[Dennis_Wolff]

Well I'd like to say you're right and thanks but I can't. I can make this happen simply by shifting the page file from the root volume to another volume, rebooting and using the same tape without ever taking it out of the drive. Page file on the root, the job fails. Page file on another volume, the job succeeds. It has something to do with the page file or possibly a corrupt firmware on the tape drive but nobody seems to understand or can explain precisely why this is happening.

But thanks for your time and input anyway.

[Guest_User]

>Page file on the root, the job fails.
>Page file on another volume, the job succeeds.

Are you backing up the pagefile on c:?

[Dennis_Wolff]

I'm so sorry! I stated that incorrectly. The information should have been:

Page file on the root = job success
Page file on another volume = job failure

To answer your question: No, I'm not backing up the page file when it exists on any volume.

Additional info: I tried to update the firmware on the tape drive yesterday and it failed, after which no backup job would succeed no matter where the page file was located. Contacted HP and they are sending me another tape drive (that 3 year warranty sure is nice, although the drive is only a couple weeks old). At any rate, perhaps my problem has been because of faulty firmware.

Will post the results of tests after installation of new drive.

Thanks for your input.

[Russ_Perry]

Very interesting... If you create a backup to disk folder and run your backup to that with the pagefile on E do you get the same error?? Also, the pagefile is automatically excluded no matter where you put it so that 'shouldn't' cause the problem.