Drive keeps rejecting my cleaning tape

[Thegg]

Hi all,
I am having a problem with my Dell PV136T and Arcserve. Not sure which is causing the problem.

Basically what happens is I attempt to run a Clean drive job through Arcserve, which thinks for a bit then declares:
"ERROR: SLOT IS EMPTY".
Meanwhile the cleaning tape has been loaded into one of my drives, causing the drive itself to come up with a Tape Error. The tape will not eject through Arcserve, I need to use the PV136T to eject the tape (which it puts in the wrong slot!), and then perform a soft reset on the drive so it functions again.

Additionally the activity log lists these 2 errors:
E6084 Drive hardware error - servo or sensor [ABSL:2011 CMD:A5h]
E8025 Failed to clean tape drive:15 (EC=ERROR SLOT IS EMPTY)[Device:14][DELL ]

My tapes drives are ABSL:2012 & 2016.

Any suggestions are welcome (duh).

Regards,
Edward

 

[TheLad]

Have you tried another cleaning tape? It might be the tape itself that is faulty! -----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Cyklops]

Did you configure a separate cleaning slot when you ran the device configuration ?? ARCserve then reserves a slot for the cleaning tape ( which appears yellow-colored in the device manager ). Only this slot can and will be used by ARCserve for cleaning purposes.

regards

 

[Thegg]

TheLad: Yes I have tried a different tape. I ran at least 15 jobs with my first tape then the problem started so I switched tape, and the second tape has not had a single successful clean.

Cyklops: Yup, cleaning slot configured & in use.

Thanks,
Edward

 

[fastmustang]

Also, make sure your running the latest SP for Arcserve which is SP4 and the Updated Tape Drivers Patch from CA's site.

 

[Thegg]

<bump>

fastmustang: Running SP4 & I *think* I found the patch you are referring to. Didn't fix the problem however.

Ok now it's getting desperate, one of my drives is actually requesting a clean, and I can't clean the damn thing!

I'm considering updating the library & drive firmware on my PowerVault 136T to the latest versions(2.73, E21V), but apparently last time we tried this on an earlier firmware update it caused alot of problems.
Anyone else had any issues upgrading firmware?
Also is there any arcserve patches I should run before upgrading firmware?

Ta,
Edward