BE 7.3 suddenly stopped backing up to Travan tape

[Marty33]

Hi everyone,
I have read through the forum, and found many posts with a similar problem to mine, but not the exact problem, so here goes (any help appreciated very much!!! if you are in australia, I can gladly provide beer in exchange...)

Veritas BE 7.3 Rev 2575 is running on NT Server 4, backing up to Seagate STT8000N Travan tape drive. Backup is scheduled daily, and has never had a problem.
All of sudden though, it has stopped backing up; whether it is a scheduled backup or a manual one, the tape drive simply makes noise for about 45min (backup usually takes 1 hour in total) and then prompts to remove the tape. Following this, an alert appears saying to insert a tape... I have tried with 6 different tapes, two of which are brand new. The backup does not go beyond 0% complete, and no bytes are written. The drive seems to work fine, as it responds to Eject commands through BE, and BE is able to detect a tape being inserted.
If a tape is inserted without BE runnning, the drive makes noise (usual) for a round 30 secs and then stops.

The only unusual error log I could find displayed the following:
Job server: MAIN
Job name: Full data backup
Job started: Monday, 19 January 2004 at 20:00:06
Job type: Backup
Log file: BEX55.txt
===========================================================
Error - Mount failed.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^
0x800706be(2147944126)
============================================================
Job ended: Tuesday, 20 January 2004 at 10:57:11
Job completion status: Aborted by service shutdown



There are others, but they all say Error - Mount Failed.


I hope I have explained this sufficiently, and that someone is able to help! All suggestions are greatly appreciated. (So far I will try re-installing)
Thanks in advance,
Martin

 

[mattjurado]

Brand new tapes failing... Okay, sounds like a drive problem to me, but it could also be corrupt software, or a controller problem. Run the diagnostic utility for the drive (located on one of the cds that came with the drive). You can also download it here, I think this is the right one... Apparently support for Seagate tape is now handled by Certance.

http://www.certance.com/support/tape/utils/index.html

If it fails the diagnostic, its drive or controller. Move the tape drive to a different computer, and if it cannot run there as well, its the tape drive.

If it passes the diagnostic, you might reinstall Backup Exec. My money is on a tape drive problem, sorry to say.

Matt J.

 

[Rols]

Hey Marty - A fellow Aussie!!!!

Mate sounds like a drive problem to me. Try running a backup just using NTBackup and see if you have the same problem. But imho it definatley sounds like hardware.

You could also check the amount of Hard / Soft read / Write errors under the properties of the drive & see if you get an extrodinarily large number.

Keeps us posted.