"Bad Media" error on new SATA Quantum DLT-V4 drive and new media

[Jack_Dorsey]

Just installed a new SATA interface Quantum DLT-V4 drive last night and we have been unsuccessful thus far with getting BEX to be happy with it. We also purchased the new Sony DLT-VS1 tapes that incorporate 320GB compression. Before doing all this, I consulted a Symantec Tech who sent me to a link of supported devices, and the device is supported in SATA and SCSI formats. At that time, he also assured me that it doesn't really matter what type of media you use. What matters is the device.

So I installed the device last night, then setup the device within BEX and loaded their drivers for it. Everything installed without error. Load in a brand spanking new tape and inventory it. The job says it's running, however no lights ever blink on the drive like usual and I can't physically see anything going on at all.

The inventory completes successfully (but of course) and no additional information is found in the Job History view or Job Log view. When I take a look at the media in the drive from the Devices tab, I see a blank Media Label, (Bad Media) for a Media Description, and "Retired Media" under Media Set. I have no clue why any of this would be happening.

If I try to run a Catalog or Quick Erase, I get an error of "1 - Incorrect function." If I try to run a Backup, the job eventually spits out the tape and I get a yellow question mark alert stating to "Please insert overwritable media." It doesn't matter which of our 31 brand spanking new tapes I put into the drive. All of our older tapes (Sony DLT-VS1's as well only with 160GB compression instead of 320GB) produce the same results.

Anyone got any ideas before I spend eight hours on the phone with Symantec Tech Support while they tell me to peruse the various unhelpful and unrelated knowledge base articles?

Running 11(d) with both hotfixes and all remotes have all of our pertinent agents installed post-hotfixing as it states to do in the install docs.

Server is running Windows 2K3 Enterprise SP1, Xeon 5150 2.66Ghz, 4GB 667Mhz RAM

Thanks in advance for any advice/help given.

Cheers, Jack

[Sherry_Bayless]

First thing I would do is call Quantum and make 100% sure those tapes are cool for that drive. I kinda suspect they aren't. Quantum's support has been far more knowledgeable and helpful to me than Symantec's. And when I asked Quantum what media to use in my new DLT-S4 drive, they said "Quantum brand DLT-S4 **PERIOD**". Not approved for any other brands yet.

Also make sure you don't have any Events 9 or 11 in your System Log. That would mean your drive isn't working quite right either. And Quantum's tech support will be the best resource there too.

Best of luck!
SherryB

[Jack_Dorsey]

Quite helpful indeed, Sherry. By the time you had written this response, I had actually did exactly what you said and Quantum did tell me that it's Quantum's brand only at this point, however we're still moving forward because we just put 31 of these Sony tapes into production and I won't get into details about how much they cost. :D

I guess all I can do at this point is wait for them to support the Sony's as they have in the past. Thanks for the info about the event logs, luckily nothing there (I've been doing a lot of Event Viewer sweeps and reboots the past two days so it's nice and clean).

Thanks again for the help! I'm going to leave this one as "unanswered" for a bit longer, but I'll update it tonight after a bit more work.

Cheers, Jack

[Jack_Dorsey]

Hi Sherry,

One more quick question for you for when you have a moment, please.

Are you using Symantec's drivers or Quantum's? (By accident) I happened to load Quantum's rivers for all of our tape drives and there is an entire host of features all of a sudden when I'm looking at the device's properties, to include details about the media inside (which tells me it's now working).

Just wondering.

Thanks, Jack

[David_Sanz]

Hi Jack

I had a similar problem with a customer of mine, also with a SATA device. After having a look at it, it turned out to be the configuration of the SATA port on the server's BIOS (it was in RAID mode or similar).

Have a look at that.

Regards

[Jack_Dorsey]

Hi David,

Well it turned out to be at least one of several issues that were causing the problem(s). To start, the Hotfix 2 was never successfully installed. This was corrected.

Secondly, we updated the server's BIOS, as you so suggested. We also purchased an internal SATA card, as the Quantum techs said that might be the problem since we initially had the Quantum connected to the motherboard's SATA port and they recommend against that (a dedicated SATA controller is recommended due to port resource management).

After we performed both these steps, we have a successful backup/operating drive. It might have been a compounded issue for all we know since we made several changes at once.

We are backing up on the Sony tapes just fine at this point, FYI. Success is a nice thing to have on a Friday evening. :D So is the peace of mind that comes with having successful encrypted backups.

Thanks to both you and Sherry for your collective wisdom. Hopefully someone will find this info helpful at some point.

Time for beers. Cheers, Jack

[Sherry_Bayless]

I started out using Quantum's drivers, but they did not work for me. Quantum recommended that I use Symantec's drivers.
I'm glad to hear the Quantum drivers worked! :) Since our media was $100 apiece for DLT-S4, I have a pretty good idea of your Sony tape investment ;-D. Cha-ching!

[Jack_Dorsey]

Yes our DLT-VS1 320GB tapes were NOT cheap, especially when you multiply them by 31. However, we got our backups to work with the Symantec drivers, not the Quantum drivers. I should have specified, sorry about that. I never tried the Quantum drivers in a backup routine, only loaded them for Windows to see if once I did that it would fix the problems we were having.

What I think fixed our backups was the Hotfix 2 & 6 installations. I had initially installed Hotfix 6 for a specific reason that I found in the Hotfix list, but never installed 2. Looking into my install logs, I saw that Hotfix 6 never installed properly. Ack! After I got clean installs on both Hotfixes, we're running 100% perfectly with the new encryption capabilities. Lovely!

My heart goes out to those who are still experiencing issues. I'm glad that we have our Exchange hosted. :D

Cheers, Jack