Exabyte VXA-320 - Tape drivers for 9.1 - will we every get it?

[Dave_Brown_2]

Hi,
Will symantec ever release a tape driver version for the Exabyte VXA-320 for 9.1 or do we have to spend a lot of money to upgrade to the new version?
Thanks,
Dave.

[Ken_Putnam]

I doubt it.



You should be able to use the Exabyte drivers with no problems, though

[Jeff_Green]

How does one "use the Exabyte drivers" under 9.1? I've tried with what Windows 2003 "finds" for the drive, and with the Veritas drivers that are found using the TapeInst utility. Neither works. The Tandberg/Exabyte site says

CAUTION!: Commercial backup applications (ArcServe, BackupExec, Retrospect, etc.) require their own drivers to work correctly. The following driver, provided by Exabyte, is to be used only with an Operating Systems' built-in backup application. Once the following driver is installed, commercial backup applications will not work properly.

* Install this driver only if specifically instructed to do so by your backup application's developer.
* Removal of this driver, once installed, is extremely difficult.

What am I missing?

[Ken_Putnam]

If Windows sees and accesses the drive in NTBackup using the Exabyte drivers, you should be able to run the hardware wizard and tell it to use existing drivers. I've never had a problem using mfg drivers, your milage may vary. And if TapeInst doesn't support the drive, what choice do you have other than updating your software?Message was edited by:
Ken Putnam

[Jeff_Green]

Both Windows and TapeInst installed drivers for the VXA-320 device under BEWS v9.1, but neither works- they both result in error 0xa0008101 - Invalid Physical Volume Library Argument. And no, the pertinent KB troubleshooting articles don't remedy the error (remove and replace the device). I was hoping you had another hint that would work for me. Thanks in any event.

The only solution seems to be to upgrade to 10.1 or use the VXA-2 drive instead.

Jeff

[Dave_Brown_2]

Hi,
You can get it to work by changing the Exabyte enquiry string (using the exabyte utility tool) to fool Veritas to think the tape is an Exabyte-2 tape drive, I have it working this way. The problem is veritas might not see the full x23 benefits of extra capacity.
From what I see, if I upgrade to the next veritas version for this minor driver issue, will I have to upgrade every few years to keep up with new drivers for new tape drives when they come out!?! Are veritas 'forcing' you to upgrade by this backdoor route?
The old versions of veritas allowed you to edit the drive database to add your tapedrive does 9.1?
Bye,
Dave.

[Deepali_Badave]

Hello,

You can try using OEM (Original Equipement manufacturers) drivers.

Regards,

[R_H_2]

The inquiry string will not affect speed or capacity. I HIGHLY recommend the inquiry string method if you aren't going to fork over the $$$ to upgrade. Here's an Exabyte KB article:

http://www.exabyte.com/support/online/kb/display.cfm?id=2002