Backup Question

[Doug_Mitchell]

I run Veritas 8.6. My problem is that every once and a while the drive will eject the tape before the job is complete. There isnt an error message it just ejects and says it looking for media. I have the overwrite media checked so it starts from the beginning of the tape. The amount of data backed up is only about half the tape before compression. I have tried a number of different tapes. Any suggestions?

[Ken_Putnam]

Sure sounds like the tape is filling up.

What kind of tape device, what kind of media, how much data is backed up before the tape ejects?

[Joey_Sloan]

I have the same backup problem. I use DLT IV tapes, and they get ejected after about 20gb, when the tapes are 40/80. My backup job fails if i simply eject the tape and put it back in, but is successful if i put a different tape in. I'm unclear if i could recover with 2 tapes. any thoughts?

[Joey_Sloan]

I also run 8.5, if that's any help.

[Ken_Putnam]

Sure sounds like the tape(s) are full Multi-Volume backups should be no problem.

20 GB on 40/80 media doesn't sound good, though. Are these jobs Overwrite or Append?

How many errors are reported for your media?Message was edited by:
Ken Putnam

[Joey_Sloan]

I'd be glad to send some event logs to you. They don't seem to indicate anything to me, other than different files not getting backed up each time.

[Ken_Putnam]

I was referring to Hard and Soft errors on the tapes themselves.

Are these jobs Overwrite or Append?

[Joey_Sloan]

The are overwrite

[Joey_Sloan]

What exactly do you mean by hard and soft errors on the tapes themselves? I've used brand new tapes to try to correct this problem to no avail

[Ken_Putnam]

From the Media tab, right click a tape\Properties. Shows the total number of Hard and Soft errors since stats were last reset.

If you get this performance on new tapes, I'd suspect that the drive itself may be going bad. Do you have any manufacturer diagnostics you can run against it?Message was edited by:
Ken Putnam

[Joey_Sloan]

I'm getting alot of soft write errors. You may be on to something. What exactly are soft errors as compared to hard errors? I'm going to start looking for some diagnostics.

[Ken_Putnam]

a Hard error is when a program attempts to write to the device and the write fails

a Soft error is when an attempt fails, but on retry it succeeds.

Some soft error are OK, a lot is not, and more thatn 5-10 errors would make the tape suspect, unless all tapes are getting the errors, in which case it may be firmware or drivers that are causing the problem.

[Joey_Sloan]

All tapes are getting the errors, there are usually 1500+.

i've got a new tape drive coming tomorrow, as you suggested earlier. This seems more likely than a driver problem, since the drive had been working correctly for a while. If this fails, i will check firmware, etc.

Do you have any other thoughts?