Hi
(original message below)
It turns out that failing TLZ06 DAT drives is not an uncommon
phenomenon. General consensus was that they just wear out and do
need replacing. The DEC support people thought the same, and replaced
the drives.
One suggestion was to go for DLT technology, which is thought to be
more robust.
thanks to all who replied,
Andrew
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Andrew Gillies e-mail anaru_at_cns.ed.ac.uk
Centre for Cognitive Science anaru_at_cogsci.ed.ac.uk
& Centre for Neural Systems
2 Buccleuch Place phone 0131 650 1000 ext 4408
Edinburgh EH8 9LW fax 0131 650 6626
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> We have a consistent problem of DAT tape drives (TLZ06) failing to
> read or write to tapes. The systems are DEC alpha 3500S (built in
> tape drives) running DU3.0/3.2.
>
> When the tape drives where new, they were fine. However, over a
> period of use (a year or so) they begin to produce media errors, and
> make DAT tapes unreadable. We run a procedure of cleaning the tape
> drives every second use, and renewing cleaning tapes regularly.
> Eventually, the tape drives get so bad that once they have written
> information to a new tape, that tape is even unreadable!
>
> Every media failure the binary error log produces the event listed at
> the end of this message. Has anyone had similarly problems, and could
> suggest a cause? It seems unusual that we should need to replace *all*
> our tape drives only after a year of use?
Received on Tue Feb 20 1996 - 21:51:30 NZDT