Tape Drive Errors: Cannot read / write more than 256Kb

[MichaelPotts]

Hi everyone,

I have a client that had a tape drive in there server, irrelevant of what type this was, it was stopping any reading or writing at 256Kb (give or take 15Kb). This happened no matter what I tried to do to fix it. I have since had the tape drive replaced with a new SONY DAT/DDS-2, 4/8GB, Internal, SCSI, 5.25", OEM, the problem is, that it is still doing the same thing, you're probably thinking, check you scsi cable, done that, it is all good. I am at a stand still now, is there any form of advanced trouble shooting I can do?


Regards

-Mike

 

[Annihilannic]

What commands are you using to read from the tape drive? Have you tried experimenting with a variety of block sizes? Annihilannic.

 

[mrregan]

are you using the same tape over and over?

 

[MichaelPotts]

I have tried with a variety of tapes, so I know it is not bad media, I have tried writing with a variety of file sizes, I cannot write a file greater than about 250Kb, I can write a file smaller than this, but if I try to write say two files that equal greater than 250Kb then it will fail on me again. The commands I use to write or to read information are as follows:

to read from tape # cpio -icvduAm < /dev/rStp0

This will put the contents of the tape into your working directory and will not overwrite any pathed information as the / is taken out of the equation (at the start of the path) by the flag A

I have used this command as long as I can remember, I have never had problems with it before. Also I have not tried experimenting with a variety of block sizes, do you think this can help, could you please show me how this is done

-Mike

 

[Annihilannic]

dd if=somelargefile of=/dev/rStp0 bs=32k for example would write the contents of somelargefile to the tape. Referse the &quot;if&quot; and &quot;of&quot; parameters to read it again. Change the &quot;bs&quot; to see which works best for your drive. Annihilannic.

 

[mrregan]

Do you use the B option on your cpio parameters to create a tape?