Backup jobs fail... i/o error

[jcraig49]

I am running Veritas BE Version 8.5 with a single tape Dell Powervault 110T. The unit has worked great for the past 400 hours and then all of the sudden my jobs started failing with the following error in the log:

"The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error"

I can still inventory tapes and a few thousand bytes of data actually gets written to the tape before the job fails (this varies in size). I updated the tape drivers to the latest version but still no luck.

I think I've got a tape drive failure but is there anything else I can try before I replace this thing?

Thanks,
Craig

 

[Prydonian]

jcraig49;

Can't tell from your post, but are you using the same tape(s) over and over? If so, could be a bad tape. Look at the tpae properties and see how many errors it has scored.

How old is the unit? is it still under warranty?

You can try cleaning the tape drive. Dirty heads can cause this type of behavior.

Check and make sure the SCSI cables are fully inserted and dogged down. You'd be surprised what kind of errors can happen with a SCSI cable improperly installed!

Mike, The IT Guy



Life is too short to drink warm beer....

 

[jcraig49]

Thanks for the reply Mike,

I am using the same tapes over and over but each tape only has about 10 backups total on it and I've used more than one tape with the same result. Also, the alert light stays on on the front of the unit.

I'm not sure how old the unit is but we bought it used. Its not under warranty.

SCSI cable is good and tight.

I did go out and buy a DLTIII cleaning tape for this drive. Its brand new but the drive won't take the tape. It keeps ejecting it saying its "bad media".

Any ideas?

 

[LawnBoy]

I've seen a lot of DDS drives spit out cleaning tapes. Seems that when they read the tape header, that's the extent of the cleaning job. The tape is then ejected due to "bad media" ('cause there's no data on it). The cleaning media is in contact with the tape heads, but not for very long. I used to stick the cleaning tape in 4-5 times to get a decent cleaning job.

 

[RohitThakral]

Around two month back i was facing same Problem. Actually Problem is some with SCSI cable or tape Drive. Its basically a H/W Problem. Do send me ur response if this work on rohit.thakral@gmail.com

 

[jcraig49]

Cleaning didn't seem to help. I went ahead and ordered another tape drive and cable.

Thanks for the help though,
Craig