Summary: Backup Problems

From: vicky@bu.edu
Date: Fri Nov 08 1996 - 18:03:59 CST


Hi everybody,

vicky@bu.edu wrote:

> We recently purchased an Exabyte EXB-8505 XL 8mm
>Cartridge tape drive from Falcon, which is giving us problems.
>This letter is an update, because there were some things that
>I have not covered in the first letter that people have asked
>me about.
>
>After a couple of days of use the tape drive started giving us errors,
>details of which is listed below. After contacting the vendor (Falcon)
>they said that tape drive just needed cleaning. The problem persisted,
>so they told us to send it back (it literally needed cleaning every
>couple of hours to work properly).The new tape drive is even worse
>(it does not even complete a single filesystem before it aborts the
>entire dump), so I am getting really nervous concerning our backups.
>It keeps giving the following message "error # feet in tape", and
>the it aborts the backup.
>
>I know that I have to contact them again but I am hoping for some
>wisdom from you first, because they were not that insightful
>the first time. Also, please let me know of possible additional
>information that you may need for a diagnosis.
>
>E.T.C.

As most of you suggested the problem seemed to be that we were
using 8mm video grade tapes, instead of data grade. After switching
tapes, the problem seems to almost disappear.

Thanks to:

 vqh@dwrock.dw.lucent.com
 "Garry.Robbins"
 lthomson@fsaia.qld.gov.au
 dhaut@level1.com
 "John C. Pavao" <jcpavao@ultranet.com>
 frode@venus
 bern@erim.org
 davem@solve.net
 "gray,valerie" <valerie@facade.cc.bellcore.com>
 bob@hobbes.dtcc.edu (Bob Rahe)
 Brad Young <bbyoung@amoco.com>
 Kenn Owen <kowen@aip.org>
 DonWilliams <don.williams@research.natpower.co.uk>
 dav@litronic.com (David L. Markowitz)
 Sesharao Patchipala <sesharao@lsil.com>
 bwood@world.northgrum.com (Burton T. Wood)
 brian@chimera.psych.unimelb.edu.au (Brian Desmond)
 John Venter

I really appreciate everybody's input.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:11:15 CDT