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Clean Tpe issue

Shahin
Level 6

Hi,

We have en issue with our clean tape, we have a PowerVault 124T  with 16 slots and BE 15. last time we get a message that the drive should be cleanup, we always use the slot 16 as temporary cleaning slot, so as always we put the clean tape in the slot 16 and confiure the slot 16 is cleaning slot, and run a clean job, but after 5 minuts or so the job fialed with this error:

Final error: 0xe0008234 - Library Error - attempt to clean a drive in a library with expired or bad cleaning media.

We did some research on the issue and some suggested to change the life cycle limit that is on the cleaning tape from 21 to 50, we did that but still the clean job failed with the same error.

We thought maybe the tape is at end of his life cycle so we bought a new Universal cleaning tape (the same as the old one)

and put it in the slot 16 and run a enventory and run a clean job, but again after 5 minuts we get the same error, but this time the warning of cleaning the drive has disappeared and it looks like the drive has been cleaned.

Any idea why we get this error with the new clean tape?

9 REPLIES 9

pravinkumar_d
Level 3

HI,

After selecting the slot for cleaning tape did you marked that as cleaning slot in Backup exec console ?

Also did you ran inventory before you run the cleaning job

Also refer this technote - https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000035789

 

Regards
Pravin Kumar D

As I have previously said,

"we always use the slot 16 as temporary cleaning slot, so as always we put the clean tape in the slot 16 and confiure the slot 16 is cleaning slot, and run a clean job, but after 5 minuts or so the job fialed with this error."

Also

"put it in the slot 16 and run a enventory and run a clean job"

 

Larry_Fine
Moderator
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Are you using bar codes on your cleaning cartridges?

Might the new cartridge have the same bar code as the old cartridge?

Larry_Fine
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@Shahin wrote:

and put it in the slot 16 and run a enventory and run a clean job, but again after 5 minuts we get the same error, but this time the warning of cleaning the drive has disappeared and it looks like the drive has been cleaned.


FYI, running an inventory of a "regular" (ie non cleaning) slot, gives the same results as running a cleaning job.  Simply put, if the cleaning cartridge gets put in the tape drive, the tape drives "does its thing" without any further assistance or intervention from Backup Exec.

The primary purpose of marking a slot as a cleaning slot is to exempt it from a whole library inventory job, so that you do not waste cleaning cycles when doing inventories.  Cleaning cartridges are only good for so many cleanings, so you don't want to waste them

PRAVEENCRIC
Level 3

Hi Shahin, 

Cleaning job may also fail as a result of maximum number of cleaning's reached.

you may confirm with the cleaning tape manufacture documentation that the cleaning tape has not reached it limit in how many times it can be cleaned. The tape drive might not do the cleaning even after you increase this number.

You may try this 

Step 1 : Under the Cleaning slot property try increasing the maximun number of cleaning 

I found the similar document for older version https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.TECH78545
 
then you may try the below steps: 
 
1. Delete the Cleaning media either from the from the all Media tab
2. Under the Storage tab in Backup Exec, right click on the slot which contains the cleaning media and click on SCAN.
3. Run the cleaning job again.
 

 

Hope this helps! 

 

KR

Praveen 

Hi Larry,

Thank you for your reply,

yes our library has a barcode scan and I think both clean tapes has the same barcode I will check that let you know.

we dont have enough slots to reserv one only for the cleaning tape that is why I use the slot 16 for clean and when the job is finish remove the clean option from the slot.

at the offline media I can see a cleaning tape there, should I remove it from there and put the new clean tape there and run a scan of slot and after run a clean job?

 

Thanks

 

HI KR,

Thanks for the update,

At the offline media I can see a cleaning tape there, should I remove it from there and put the new clean tape in one of the slots, and run a scan of slot and after run a clean job? is this wht you mean?

Thanks

Larry_Fine
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If both of your cleaning cartridges have the same bar code, then BE is not aware that the "new" cleaning cartridge is "new".  If there was a unique bar code, then a simple scan job would tell BE that there is a "new"/different cleaning cartridge available.

The workaround to re-using the same bar code (or not having bar codes at all) is to do what you asked... delete the cleaning media from the offline media section.  That will delete the cleaning cartridge from the BE database.  More specifically, that gets the "cleanings used" count back down to zero.

Then put the cleaning cartridge back in the library and scan it, then either run an inventory of that slot or run a cleaning job.  If you are using a "CLN" style bar code, I don't even think you have to mark the slot (temporarily) as a cleaning slot, as BE should recognize the "CLN" bar code as a cleaning cartridge.

FYI, if that tape drive is no long requesting to be cleaned (because I think you mentioned that the new cartridge already got inventoried), you may not need to do any of this until the tape drive requests to be cleaned again.  YMMV, some people clean "as needed", some people clean on  a scheduled basis.

Hi Larry,

 

Thanks again for your detailed info,

Both cleaning tapes have the CLN barcode. I think do as suggested. delete the old tape from the offline media wait for the next cleaning request then put the new tape in the library scan the slot and see if the library will pickup the new tape and clean the drive.

I will keep you posted.

 

Thanks