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We have an Ultrium internal tape drive to do monthly backups. Last week, in the middle of writing a tape, it ejected it with an input/output error and started flashing the cleaning light. Of course, no cleaning cartridge was about, so I ordered one. It arrived today; I inserted it into the drive--and nothing happened. That is, now, three hours later, the cleaning light is steady amber and the ready light is flashing. According to HP this is normal during cleaning, but the cleaning is not supposed to take more than 3 minutes!

Pressing eject button and holding it for 20 seconds or so does nothing. Issuing mt eject/offline commands returns an unspecified input/output error. The cartridge is stuck in the drive! mt status works, however, returning

SCSI 2 tape drive: File number=-1, block number=-1, partition=0. Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x0 (default). Soft error count since last status=0 General status bits on (10000): IM_REP_EN

Just wondering if anyone has any ideas, e.g., is the drive itself a write-off? Or is it salvageable? And is it worth it?

Thanks

EDIT: Held the eject button for about 40 seconds, which cleared the "clean" amber light. Now the mt offline actually ejected the tape, but the mt command itself hangs.

EDIT2: Oops. The amber light is back, flashing, the tape ejected but mt offline exited with yet another input/output error. I suspect the drive is no longer with us...

EDIT3: Here is some more interesting behaviour: when I insert an actual tape, it hems and haws and stutters for a few seconds and spits it back out without any messages. Tried it with 2 different tapes.

jorgon
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  • Have you power cycled the affected drive? – mdpc Aug 11 '14 at 18:46
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    If you really think your hardware has some kind of defect, and you never ever opened up an LTO drive before, just don't do it and call an experienced service technician instead. LTO drives are really complicated pieces of hardware and if you don't know what you're doing you can do much wrong. – Marc Stürmer Aug 11 '14 at 19:02
  • Have you tried a different tape cleaning cartridge? It is possible that the one you are using is defective. – mdpc Aug 11 '14 at 19:02
  • Which generation of drives is this? There are six generations of LTO/Ultrium drives. Based on my experience (with LTO4 drives of a different brand), I'd say you are lucky the tape that got stuck wasn't a data tape with important data on it. I have experienced enough drive failures, that I actually had to write a cron job to open RMA cases for me. Often failures mean both drive and tape had to be written off. – kasperd Aug 11 '14 at 19:07
  • I suspect that the drive is dead. Rebooting the machine brought the flashing "clean" light back, but the "ready" light is steady green now. I have a cleaning cartridge at home; I think I'll bring it in to work tomorrow and see if it works. The drive is Ultrium 448, if that helps any. Thanks Jorg – jorgon Aug 11 '14 at 19:10
  • @user2888328 I don't know that model name. A search on Google suggests it is an LTO2 drive. That's some old technology. I never touched anything older than LTO3. – kasperd Aug 11 '14 at 19:22
  • kasperd: indeed. It was here long before I started on this job. I guess I will just tell them to get a new one. :) Thanks! – jorgon Aug 11 '14 at 20:20

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