Drive or tape issues

[Jason_Starkey]

I am running the latest for 11d.  I have a 24 slot tape library...HP's MLS5000 series.  I have 2 SDLT tape drives in it. 

I just recently upgraded to version 11d as a clean install, but also just inserted all new tapes into the library after I did the install.  Throughout the last several months I encounter many tapes marked bad due to excessive soft read and write errors.

I'm leaning towards a possible bad batch of tapes, but do not know how to troubleshoot this issue, or at least rule things out. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Greg_Meister]

Hi Jason,

FIrstly, I'd say try to isolate the issue as to whether or not it's bad media. Remove all but one of the new tapes, and inset one known good tape from the previous batch. Perform a long erase on both to make sure they're clean. Run an inventory job against both, then test a backup to each. Watch before and after on the tape stats to see if the hard and soft errors change during the backups.if they appear on both media, then I'd say it's time to start looking at the SCSI bus; from the SCSI controller to the library to the termination. Check cabling, drivers, firmware. Check the System Event log for any errors with a source pointing to the controller or tape hardware.

Let me know if these steps help.

Greg

[Jason_Starkey]

Thanks you for the advice.  I'll try these procedures next week, then give you an update on my discoveries.

Thanks again,

Jason