backup successful, but tape blank!?!?

[ka]

Hello:

I'm running ARCserve for netware version 6.1 with SP 1997.9. I'm using the manager for windows. I've just replaced the tape server due to age and faultiness. It's an HP C1537A running on an old HP Netserver LH Pro. Anyway, backups are all OK, reports and job queue claim that each backup has been 100% sucessful and that each tape has been correctly formatted with it's proper name. Says the backups are taking the right amount of time, beginning at the right time, and are happy with everything.

However, now when I put anyone of these tapes in, device management says that it's blank. I have a feeling that the data has been written, even labeled correctly, but that now it's not reading the label correctly!?? Have never had this before the new tape server. Has anyone seen this before? Of course I don't notice this until an emergency, today, sat, when someone's lost the most important file in the world.

Any help/advice is greatly appreciated...
ka

 

[ka]

well, here's how i solved it, if you're interested:

i didn't. just put it in enough times that finally device managment decided the tapes weren't blank. once they didn't say they were blank, restore was happy to use them. after so much checking, it looks like my firmware L005 isn't on the compatibility list on computer associate's webpage for the version of my arcserve.

dumb question: what exactly is firmware, and can the same tapedrive, when replaced, have a different firmware? please clarify?!?

 

[garrett]

Hi Ka, I had a similar problem when running ARCserve 6.5 (620) on an Exabyte 220 library equipped with Mammoth drives. The backups ran successfully but their were no sessions on the tapes. They had been formatted but no data was written to them. This ended up being an incompatibility with the EPROM code on the drives. The Mammoth drive have two set of firmware... firmware is programming instructions that reside on chips on the hardware device itself... anyway, these drive have firmware that controls how the drive operates and responds to commands, and firware that enables optional features. The optional feature is what Exabyte call the EPROM code. We had to back rev the EPROM code to that the backup would actually write the data to tape. What had happened was that we got a new batch of drives from Exabyte that had update EPROM code that was not compatible with ARCserve 6.5. The worst thinbg about it was that everything appeared to be okay until we had to restore... then all hell broke loose... the lesson is that you should always run a verify on your backups. G