Hi Chris, although Omniback can be slightly pnickerty I wouldnt go as far as removing it, as for the applications it backs up I would defo remove them!!!!. Unfortunately, we dont have a separate backup server and taking the host server down is nigh on impossible. I managed to resolve the problem yesterday by manually loading/unloading tapes to/from the drive in question and then IPL'ing. This was followed by a few test backups which used the robot arm successfully. However, I wasnt about to perform cartwheels around the office until we had extracted a good backup. This was a good move as once again that particular drive has dropped off agai which means the online backup of SAP will not complete in time before the next scheduled run kicks in. The silo has no maintenance contract (it expired on Feb 2nd) as we have an LTO library being installed this Saturday (later than expected). There is a god!. Anyways, for the time being i am perservering with the problem in hand as ideally one good backup before saturday is required. Thanks Chris