Travan tape problem

[jdport]

I have a Seagate Travan drive, and am using 20/40GB Travan tapes to do
nightly backups. It has been working just fine, but as of today it
refuses to accept one tape. The tape doesn't appear to be damaged in
any way, but when I feed it the tape it just runs the drive for a few
seconds and then spits the tape back out. I tried a different tape
and it seemed to work ok, but going back to the original tape it again
wouldn't accept it. like I said, the tape appears to be perfectly
ok but the drive won't accept it. Unfortunately this doesn't
generate any kind of errors in any logs I could find so I have no clue
what the problem is. Has anybody seen this kind of thing before or
have any suggestions for getting the drive to accept the tape? I
hate to remove it from the backup rotation if I don't have to, these
tapes are expensive.

Thanks!

-Jeff

 

[Rolf Blom G (AS/EAB)]

I have a Seagate Travan drive, and am using 20/40GB Travan tapes to do
nightly backups. It has been working just fine, but as of today it
refuses to accept one tape. The tape doesn't appear to be damaged in
any way, but when I feed it the tape it just runs the drive for a few
seconds and then spits the tape back out. I tried a different tape
and it seemed to work ok, but going back to the original tape it again
wouldn't accept it. like I said, the tape appears to be perfectly
ok but the drive won't accept it. Unfortunately this doesn't
generate any kind of errors in any logs I could find so I have no clue
what the problem is. Has anybody seen this kind of thing before or
have any suggestions for getting the drive to accept the tape? I
hate to remove it from the backup rotation if I don't have to, these
tapes are expensive.

Thanks!

-Jeff

I don't know about that specific tape, but I've had other (4GB) Travan
tapes that were preformatted in the factory, and by design these could
not be formatted by the end user.

(If one bulk-erased such a tape with a magnet, it would become unusable.)

Probably some essential part at the beginning of your tape is
unreadable, and the tape is now only scrap.

/Rolf

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I have a Seagate Travan drive, and am using 20/40GB Travan tapes to do
nightly backups. It has been working just fine, but as of today it
refuses to accept one tape. The tape doesn't appear to be damaged in
any way, but when I feed it the tape it just runs the drive for a few
seconds and then spits the tape back out. I tried a different tape
and it seemed to work ok, but going back to the original tape it again
wouldn't accept it. like I said, the tape appears to be perfectly
ok but the drive won't accept it. Unfortunately this doesn't
generate any kind of errors in any logs I could find so I have no clue
what the problem is. Has anybody seen this kind of thing before or
have any suggestions for getting the drive to accept the tape? I
hate to remove it from the backup rotation if I don't have to,

these tapes are expensive.

So maybe they are under warranty?

 

[Arno Wagner]

I have a Seagate Travan drive, and am using 20/40GB Travan tapes to do
nightly backups. It has been working just fine, but as of today it
refuses to accept one tape. The tape doesn't appear to be damaged in
any way, but when I feed it the tape it just runs the drive for a few
seconds and then spits the tape back out. I tried a different tape
and it seemed to work ok, but going back to the original tape it again
wouldn't accept it. like I said, the tape appears to be perfectly
ok but the drive won't accept it. Unfortunately this doesn't
generate any kind of errors in any logs I could find so I have no clue
what the problem is. Has anybody seen this kind of thing before or
have any suggestions for getting the drive to accept the tape? I
hate to remove it from the backup rotation if I don't have to, these
tapes are expensive.

Personal experience: Travan is trash. I had two different drives die on
me, tarpes that were unreadable and other problems. And the tapes are
far, far too expensive.

Arno

 

[Curious George]

Personal experience: Travan is trash. I had two different drives die on
me, tarpes that were unreadable and other problems. And the tapes are
far, far too expensive.

http://tinyurl.com/mpyfw

<quote>

Stop right there.

The Travan drives, particularly the floppy based ones, were foul
beyond belief. If DAT is the "jalopy" of tape drives, Travan is the
"Barbie Ferrari" of tape drives. It looks like a drive, and you can
even kinds use it as one, slowly, in small pieces. But it's little
better than a toy by comparison even with traditionally "poor" drives
like (say) TU58.

I'm not kidding. The quality of the Travan drives really was that far
behind even inexpensive professional drives. If someone tried to sell
a car as badly made as the Travan tape drive they'd be put in jail,
even in Eastern Europe they'd have been put in jail, back in the
depths of the Warsaw Pact. They're that bad.

</quote>

 

[Aidan Karley]

If someone tried to sell
a car as badly made as the Travan tape drive they'd be put in jail,
even in Eastern Europe they'd have been put in jail, back in the
depths of the Warsaw Pact. They're that bad.

When was the last time that you drove a Trabant? Or a Moskvitch?
Serious question.
You make Travans sound non-functional. The above vehicles were
(are!) functional, if slow, ugly, uncomfortable and inefficient. But
being of relatively simple mechanics, they're also capable of running
for quite a long time.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Stop right there.

The Travan drives, particularly the floppy based ones, were foul
beyond belief. If DAT is the "jalopy" of tape drives, Travan is the
"Barbie Ferrari" of tape drives. It looks like a drive, and you can
even kinds use it as one, slowly, in small pieces. But it's little
better than a toy by comparison even with traditionally "poor" drives
like (say) TU58.

I'm not kidding. The quality of the Travan drives really was that far
behind even inexpensive professional drives. If someone tried to sell
a car as badly made as the Travan tape drive they'd be put in jail,
even in Eastern Europe they'd have been put in jail, back in the
depths of the Warsaw Pact. They're that bad.

</quote>

Matches my experiences. And a good brnad name did not help. The
second one that failed on me within a year was from HP. I moved
to MOD after that.

Arno

 

[Curious George]

When was the last time that you drove a Trabant? Or a Moskvitch?
Serious question.

I think you misread the quote. The comparison isn't Travan=Trabant or
Moskvitch (both of which were sturdy).

You make Travans sound non-functional. The above vehicles were
(are!) functional, if slow, ugly, uncomfortable and inefficient. But
being of relatively simple mechanics, they're also capable of running
for quite a long time.

If you look closely these aren't my words. It is a quote from Peter
da Silva in a discussion 3 years ago in a different group. He's
comparing Travan to enterprise tape like LTO & (S)DLT. Many Travans,
esp the ancient floppy-based ones mentioned weren't terribly
functional by the most basic standards. Only a few of the best
Travans are what you describe. But still, frankly, that's not much of
a defense of the technology of impeachment of what Peter said IMHO.

The OPs media problem sounded to me like a familiar one among less
than reliable tape, which is why I dusted the cobwebs off that post.