Sony Tape backup tape ejecting after inserting

[Sandee]

I am using a Sony SDX-500V AIT SCSI Tape drive on a server 2003.  At the end of 2008 we installed the Symantec Backup Exec 12 for Windows Servers.  In mid October our tapes started ejecting by themselves and we have not had a good backup since.  I have tried multiple different tapes.  I have checked to make sure that the over write feature is on, & the jeject upon completion is not checked.  I've made sure that there are no updates.

What is happening is, I put the tape into the drive & sometimes it ejects right away and other times it looks like it is preparing a backup & will run for quite a long time but then ejects by itself.  I have canceled the scheduled job, and restarted.  I have canceled the job & ran an inventory & it is completing that successfully.  I've tried running a test & it fails every time.

Can anyone recommend a solution for the tape ejecting over, & over & over again?

 

[pkh]

It sounds like a hardware error to me.  When the tape was ejected during a backup job, is there an alert from BE as to what the problem is?

[CraigV]

Hi,

Are you sure there isn't a prompt in BEWS's Job Monitor? Check that and make sure it's not asking for scratch/overwritable media.
Best way to test this is to manually format a tape and try the same job again. If it works, then check your retention times for your media sets...could be that it's set too high, and you have no scratch media available.

If not, then pkh is right on the money, and it's a hardware issue.

Laters!

[Sandee]

There is no alert at all, it just keeps asking to insert a disk to continue with the backup.  I just downloaded the Sony Tape Tool Test from the Sony Website, which I will be trying next.  It is supposed to check the hardware.  Have you heard if this works?

[pkh]

Does your tapes get ejected even when there is no backup/restore jobs running?  If this is so, then I am quite sure it is a hardware problem.  You can also stop the BE services when you insert the tape, this will eliminate BE as a factor in the problem.

When you do your hardware test, make sure that BE services are stopped.

If your hardware tests turned out o.k., then check that the tapes that you are putting in are either overwriteable or appendable.

[Sandee]

Thank you for your recomendations, I finally was able to get some technical service from Symantic & we found that the tape was ejecting because it was full & it was requesting the next tape.  We are now working on cleaning off some old data, so that I don't need to be at work to switch the tapes.

[CraigV]

Cool dude...just like I thought...I get those a lot when the guys don't change tapes! =/

[CraigV]

Hi,

Did that help with a solution at all?