symantec 11d - new tapes

[iskawtf]

Good morning everyone.

I just want to kindly ask if somebody encountered the same thing I am facing right now. I have 12 new tapes on my drive ( HP LTO - 2 ) to be used for backing up my MS Exchange 2003. 

The problem is, when I put all the tapes and check it on Devices Tab it shows that these "new" tapes are bad media. Why is that?

I also inventory them, though its successful I can't perform a catalog on it.

These are the errors I got on Alert Tab.

1) The device, Device\Scsi\symmpi1, is not ready for access yet.

2) The device, Device\Scsi\symmpi1, did not respond within the time period.

Suggestions will me much appreciated.

Thanks
iskawt

[pkh]

For your new tapes, did you label them?

For new tapes, do the following

1) If it is a stand-alone tape drive, put them into the tape drive one at a time and run a label job on them to label the tapes

2) If it is an autoloader, load all the tapes into it.  If you are using barcode labels, run a scan job on the entire autoloader.  Otherwise, you have to right-click on each slot that you have loaded a tape and run a label job.

Once you have done the above, the new tapes are ready to be used.  They will be in the Scratch Media Set.  You may want to associate them with some media sets that you have created before running any jobs.

> also inventory them, though its successful I can't perform a catalog on it.

You cannot catalog new tapes.  These will be automatically catalogued when they are used.

[iskawtf]

ohh, so i need to put them one at a time cause I am using stand alone tape drive.

[iskawtf]

But sir pkh, why are those media displayed as <bad media>?

[pkh]

You can try

1) do an erase on one of the <bad media> tapes

2) do a small test backup to this tape.

Let me know what is the result.

[Ken_Putnam]

Double check that they are the correct media type for you drive

For example, make sure you are not using LTO-3 tapes in an LTO-2 drive

[SystemsAdminAS]

Ken and pkh have some good points to check - LTO drives are typically backward compatible r/w one version behind and read-only 2 versions behind - drives of a certain version number cannot read those of a higher number (i.e. LTO-2 drives cannot use LTO-3 or -4 media):

http://knowledgebase.tolisgroup.com/?View=entry&EntryID=178

You may also want to check your SCSI and tape drive drivers - we had an issue with the latest MS drivers for our tape drive, which ended up causing the drive to not detect media and eventualy not be detected itself by BE 12.5 - reverting to the original Quantum drivers fixed the issue.  Since you mentioned your drive not responding, this might help - Also, I've heard from people who had the opposite problem - they needed newer drivers, not older ones.  So check with your hardware vendor, see what drivers are available and give newer or older ones a shot.