bhaidacher Posted January 20, 2003 Report Share Posted January 20, 2003 I have a Toshiba Tecra 8100 with an Adaptec 1460B card (and one 1480B that does not work well with this notebook). This is connected to a DVD-RAM drive which is recognized as a RW disk by WinXP. I thought it was the drive because I have been performing Netwrok backups since I have only been able to make it work once. In the windows event log I get a Delayed Write Failed. I talked a friend into buying Retrospect too. He has a Dell Latitude C610 with a RW CD. I managed to write to the device the first time but then I got the same 102 communication error message. Drivers are up to date, notebook bios are also up to date, what else is there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted January 21, 2003 Report Share Posted January 21, 2003 Retrospect does not load drivers for DVD-RAM disks -- all access is done through the Operating System. SCSI Troubleshooting: 1) A bad disk. Try another disk. If other disks work then you may have a faulty DVD-RAM disk. 2) Reload any drivers supplied by the drive vendor. 3) Another device on your SCSI bus is interfering with the drive's communication. Make sure your SCSI ID numbers are set correctly. Turn off your computer and the devices. Disconnect all SCSI devices except for the tape drive. 4) You have a bad cable. Replace the SCSI cable that connects the tape drive to the computer after removing other devices and cables from the SCSI chain. 5) You are missing a terminator or have a bad terminator. The last device and ONLY the last device in your SCSI chain needs to be terminated. Try replacing the terminator if you already have one on the chain. 6) The computer may be having a problem. Install Retrospect on another computer and try the drive there as the lone device on the SCSI chain. 7) The drive may be defective. If you have implemented all of the preceding steps and get failures on multiple tapes after changing cables terminators and computers then the drive (being the only factor that has not changed) is the culprit--send it back to your vendor for repairs. The steps above are essentially the outline of our device troubleshooting here at Dantz. Hands on testing of device issues is really still the best method and even getting device logging information is usually only to confirm empirical testing. Note that concluding something is a bad device is the LAST thing we assume after all other components and variables have been ruled out. "SCSI voodoo" as they call the nebulous symptoms that can plague a SCSI bus can often lead one to false assumptions of the cause of problems. It's important that once a variable is tested that it be tested more than once for consistency's sake to rule out dumb luck. For example SCSI voodoo accounts for why a tape drive may work fine for many months without proper termination but then suddenly fail in some way later. Although customers will often cite that nothing has changed with their SCSI bus configuration in months and that it was all working before this is really indicative of the inconsistency of SCSI voodoo. The quickest and most conclusive test for most devices is to test it on more than one computer as the only device on the bus and with a different SCSI cable. If the problems can be reproduced on multiple computers it's more than likely a hardware problem with the device itself. Of course there a myriad of other specific issues having to do with a device's own hardware settings like with internal jumper cables dip switches or internal termination that has to be sorted out with the device's manual and/or vendor or manufacturer of the drive, but the kernel of SCSI troubleshooting above is a good general guideline. In reply to: He has a Dell Latitude C610 with a RW CD Not at CD-RW devices are supported. While in Retrospect, go to Configure > Devices > Environment and list Vendor, Product and Version for your CD-RW drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bhaidacher Posted January 21, 2003 Author Report Share Posted January 21, 2003 1) A bad disk. No, tried several DVD-RAM and CD-RW disks, same thing. 2) Did that too. 3) All set correctly. This is not only happening with a SCSI interface. It is happening with a built in CD-RW of the Dell C610 I mention. No SCSI here. 4) Have a short shielded cable guaranteed to sustain speeds much higher that my SCSI card is capable. 5) Termination is OK. 6) Same problem. 7) No, I have two DVD-RAM units with same behavior Thank you for your response, anything else up your sleve? I tried Windows Backup and it works fine. Any setting to disable burst communication mode? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.