Very Computer

I have an Exabyte Eagle NS8 tape drive, with some Travan tapes.
After using a tape a *little* while, when reading from the tape
I get I/O errors and /var/log/messages has the following message:

Jun 14 21:50:42 tade kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Current
                             error st09:00: sense key Medium Error
Jun 14 21:50:42 tade kernel: Additional sense indicates Unrecovered read error

Since I'd like to use this drive and the tapes for system backup
purposes, a tape going unusable after about 20 rewrite cycles doesn't
give me much faith ...

The tape was not mishandled, touched, dropped, magnetised, whatever.
Actually when it broke it was sitting in the drive, which read its
previous content (success), wrote new one (success) and tried to
verify it (error). The tape is completely unusable now.

Are tapes indeed that unreliable or I have bad luck with this
particular tape ?

Thanks,

Zoltan

PS: The reply address is invalid, if you send email, please find the
    address in the sig.

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| Zoltan Kocsi                   |   I don't believe in miracles   |  
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Gene Heskett sends Greetings to Zoltan Kocsi;

I have had similar problems in the past with poorly terminated cabling,
and by a badly written device driver.  In that case I sent the drive
back to Seagate, whom I'm beginning to think likes to see their products
over the fall holidays as they seemed to fail about that time of the
year.

When it came back, it still didn't work, so I changed the driver and
card back to a much slower combo here.  That worked till the next
holiday season.  Since that was the 3rd year in a row, I changed the
brandname on the drive nameplate to TecMar.

Its been 2 years now, and still going great.

Exabyte has an excellent reputation, however the NS8 looks like a travan
design, and while I have 3 of them that work great with HP labels on
them, the basic design has been panned here before.  As we keep a
multilevel backup, I don't know if we have 20 full passes on one of
those TR-4 cartridges yet.  We have had some failures, but that was
traced to our software, and the tapes have since been re-used.

So, check  your cabling, terminations and see if there is an updated
driver for the device available.  Also, if you've been using a cleaning
tape, good luck, those things eat heads for lunch.  I much prefer to
gain access to the heads, and wipe them with a q-tip soaked in *,
paint thinner type, not rubbing, which is worthless for such uses, way
too much water in it.

 ZK> I have an Exabyte Eagle NS8 tape drive, with some Travan tapes.
 ZK> After using a tape a *little* while, when reading from the tape
 ZK> I get I/O errors and /var/log/messages has the following message:

 ZK> Jun 14 21:50:42 tade kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Current
 ZK>                             error st09:00: sense key Medium Error
 ZK> Jun 14 21:50:42 tade kernel: Additional sense indicates
 ZK> Unrecovered read error

This could be a symptom of a card driver thats not fully compliant with
the 'scsi direct' operating modes.

 ZK> Since I'd like to use this drive and the tapes for system backup
 ZK> purposes, a tape going unusable after about 20 rewrite cycles
 ZK> doesn't  give me much faith ...

 ZK> The tape was not mishandled, touched, dropped, magnetised,
 ZK> whatever. Actually when it broke it was sitting in the drive,
 ZK> which read its previous content (success), wrote new one
 ZK> (success) and tried to verify it (error). The tape is completely
 ZK> unusable now.
 ZK>  
 ZK> Are tapes indeed that unreliable or I have bad luck with this
 ZK> particular tape ?

 ZK> Thanks,

 ZK> Zoltan

Cheers, Gene
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  Gene Heskett, CET, UHK       |Amiga A2k Zeus040 50 megs fast/2 megs chip

                               |Buddha + 4 gig WDC drive, 525 meg tape
                               |Stylus Pro, EnPrint, Picasso-II, 17" vga
         RC5-Moo! 690kkeys/sec isn't much, but it all helps
email gene underscore heskett at iolinc dot net
--