Recognizing DLT tapes on SDLT Tape Drive on Veritas Backup Exec 10d

[Kevin_P]

Hi,

Setup as follows:

- SDLT 320 tape drive connected onto server running ESX 3.0.0

- Veritas BE 10d installed on a VM running Windows 2003

I have this issue whereby after loading a DLT tape with exisitng data onto the SDLT drive and doing an inventory, BackupExec sees the media as "unrecognized media". The drive is an SDLT320 tape drive. Isn't the SDLT tape drive supposed to be able to read the DLT tapes although no write operation can be done? Any ideas to make the tape recognized?

Many Thanks in Advance

[Hywel_Mallett]

I don't know about the SDLT/DLT compatability, but I assume the DLT tape was written to by Backup Exec?

[Ken_Putnam]

If the tape was created on a different drive (and it was - DLT vs SDLT) and hardware compression was enabled, this can happen if the new drive doesn't support the same compression algorithms.   Accoring to the RFP, DAT drives should not experience this problem at all, but I had problems years ago moving tapes between DLT2000 and DLT7000 drives when HW compression was used.

[Kevin_P]

Thanks for the replies so far.

The old DLT tapes were written thru DLT8000 drive using Veritas BE 7.X

So my guess is that unless hardware compression were not used, the old DLT tapes will be unrecognised in the new SDLT 320 drive?

[Ken_Putnam]

From  http://www.quantum.com/Products/TapeDrives/DLT/SDLT320/Index.aspx 

MEDIA COMPATIBILITY 

• Quantum SDLT 320 tape drives write to the following media:
  Super DLTtape I (MR-SAMCL-01)

• Quantum SDLT 320 tape drives read the following media:
  Super DLTtape I (MR-V1MQN-01), also reads DLTtape IV (THXKD-02) cartridge written on DLT 8000, DLT 7000, DLT 4000, DLT 1 and DLT VS80 drives, reads Super DLTtape I written on SDLT 220 drives

• Quantum SDLT 320 tape drives utilize the following cleaning cartridge:
  SDLT Cleaning (MR-SACCL-01)

So it should read a tape written on DLT8000 fine

Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 04-12-200708:00 AM