media seen as cleaning media?

[ciscochic]

I have a compaq MSL5000 (dual SDLT drives) attached to my media server (WinSvr 2k3 sp1).

when I have both drives enabled (unpaused) - random media is inventoried as 'cleaning media'.  Even if I scan/inventory/catalog a specific tape that is marked 'cleaning media' - it still shows as CM.  No matter WHAT I do, BE insists that it is CM.

However, if I pause one of the drives and re-inventory, the media is inventoried properly.

None of my media slots are identified as cleaning slots.  I've updated my device drivers.

Has anybody seen this before?

[Ken_Putnam]

Hmm

What are the SCSI IDs of the two drives and the library?

(You do have an LEO serial installed, right?)

[ciscochic]

My SCSI id's are as follows:

library = SCSI id 2

drive 1 = scsi id 4

drive 2 = scsi id 3

what's a LEO serial?  Haven't heard that term before.

thanks,

Andi

[Ken_Putnam]

what's a LEO serial? 

Library Expansion Option.   By defalt BackupExec supports on library with one tape drive.  for a second library or more than one drive in a single library, you need to purchase and install one serial for each,

[ciscochic]

thanks for explaining that... yes, we have a valid LEO serial number installed.  It's weird - both of the drives will work at the same time.  For example, after I had updated my device drivers yesterday, I reinventoried my library, both tape drives were inventorying (is that a word?) at the same time...and all the tapes came up OK, so I thought the problem was solved. 

I let my backups run last night w/ both drives enabled, but this morning when I checked on my backups,  1/3 of my tapes were listed as cleaning media again, so my backups were in a 'pending' state, waiting for me to insert overwritable media  .

thanks, Andi

Message Edited by ciscochic on 05-16-200712:23 PM

[Ken_Putnam]

Got me stumped here

'Fraid you're gonna have to pull out the credit card and place a service call to Symantec

[ciscochic]

well it's good thing we have an active support contract then! 

although a coworker of mine contacted them about this about 6 weeks ago, and we haven't received any updates or anything in quite a while.    I've sent several requests for updates & heard nothing back.

thanks for your help.

[dlindhuber]

I thought I saw something a while ago that mentioned switching your SCSI IDs to match how Backup Exec sees them. In your case switching the drives. They say that this is a potential cause.

The only reason I am mentioning this is that I am experiencing the same problem, but with only one of the drives in my autoloader...

I can use the other drive without an issue. Think I might have to actually create a cleaning partition and clean the drive.