Troubleshooting Tape Devices

SUMMARY

How to troubleshoot common errors with tape devices and changers.

ISSUE

Tape problems can be caused by anything from bad connections, dirty tape heads, and worn out tapes, to SCSI bus problems. By far, the most difficult of these is SCSI bus problems. These do not occur often, but when they do, they pose a considerable effort to track down. Often support from the tape hardware vendor is needed to resolve SCSI level issues. Unitrends uses a simple MTX SCSI command set and does not use drivers to interact with the tape device.

If you are having tape system troubles, try the following:

• Check the status of the tape unit itself
• Verify the tape drive is idle and ready based on its LCD or other management interface.
• Close all menus and UI windows, re-enter the browser, then stop tasker and restart it.
• Reference the following knowledge base articles:
  • Tape Media Errors Occur
  • Errors Occur While Writing a Tape Label
  • Tape Drive Not Found
  • Tape Drive is Not Available as a Device to Select
  • After Replacing a Tape Device, Jukebox is No Longer Functional or Disappears From UI
  • Tape Restore Fails with “File not found”

CAUSE

Use these steps to address common tape errors such as:
 

Failed:  <<Tape Changer Name>> changer became disconnected while writing to /dev/nst0