RSM, Backup - Sony SDT-9000 4mm DDS Tape Problem

[Guest]

Hi,
I have a really troublesome issue. If a tape is formatted and a backup
performed (using new tapes and either NT Backup and Arcserve 11.1 Backup),
everything appears to function perfectly. No errors logged, everything is OK.
However, when the tape is ejected and then reinserted, the tape ALWAYS comes
up as "Unrecognized Media". This happens everytime any tape is ejected.

The drive (Sony SDT-9000 4mm DDS) has been cleaned, the tapes are new, all
firmware and drivers updated and the unit passes all Sony diags, including
read/write. The unit is a 5yr old Dell 1300, W2K SP4.

Any ideas? Could this just be a drive that went bad? I've searched for days
online and can find nothing like this....

Thanks!
Jim

 

[Guest]

I've had similar issues (SBS 2003, not 2K) and ended up writing a ntbackup
script (batch file) and execute it with windows scheduler. Since then, I
haven't had any problems with it. I did find the following article later on
which I think may have been the problem in my case. Your problem may be
related. I hope it is some help.

The following is an excerpt from a Microsoft article:

Overview
This hotfix corrects the problem of NTBackup incorrectly choosing the backup
tape type on a drive that supports multiple tape types.

When a backup starts, it immediately fails with the error “The requested
media failed to mount. The operation was abortedâ€, even if the tape is in the
tape drive. Some tape drives support tapes with different block sizes.
Windows Small Business Server 2003 backup chooses the first tape type
available, which may not correspond to the tape type of the tape in the
drive.

This problem is most commonly seen with the Travan 20 tape drive. Windows
Small Business Server 2003 backup chooses the MiniQIC tape type instead of
the Travan Tape type.

KB 831664