Restrospect not accepting a new tape into the Backup Set

[crobles]

I am running Retrospect 18.5.3.132 on a Windows 10 Pro system with a Superloader 3 and an IBM Ultrium LTO 7 deck. 

For the past few months up until the end of April, my two scripts with schedules for backing up my storage were running flawlessly. Suddenly, even before my LTO-7 tape is full (it only has 1.4 TB in it) Retrospect started asking for a new tape. After restarting the process a few times in hopes of it continuing to use the existing tape, I tried inserting a new tape. It will load, it will say (Erased), then it moves it into slot 1 of my library and gives me an error window saying "Couldn't erase tape, error -102 (trouble communicating)". I've tried moving it to the drive and it moves there temporarily and moves back to the library slot. I've tried ejecting it and waiting for Retrospect to ask me for a blank tape and it behaves in the same way. Not sure what else to do here. 

 

So I guess my issue has two parts:

1. Why is Retrospect asking for a new tape when the existing tape is still pretty empty?

2. Why is it unable to accept a new blank tape?

 

Here is my log:

(things to note, there are three sources the script is supposed to check. Drive and two other locations on a NAS. It seems to be failing after scanning the first location only.  on 

 

Quote

+    Normal backup using 2023 Media at 5/9/2023 2:38 PM (Execution unit 1)     To Backup Set 2023 Media...

-    5/9/2023 2:38:18 PM: Copying 2023 on Local Disk (C:)

        5/9/2023 2:38:19 PM: Found: 6 files, 2 folders, 9.9 GB

        5/9/2023 2:38:19 PM: Finished matching

    5/9/2023 2:38:19 PM: Selector "All Files" was used to select 6 files out of 6.

        No files found for block level incremental backup.

        5/9/2023 2:38:19 PM: Copying: 0 files (zero and 0 hard links

        [*] devctrlrDevLogin: no login, refnum 0x207e

        [*] devctrlrInstMake: unavailable refnum 0x207e

        [*] devctrlrDevLogin: no login, refnum 0x2062

        [*] devctrlrInstMake: unavailable refnum 0x2062

        [*] devctrlrDevLogin: no login, refnum 0x207e

        [*] devctrlrInstMake: unavailable refnum 0x207e

        [*] devctrlrDevLogin: no login, refnum 0x204f

        [*] devctrlrInstMake: unavailable refnum 0x204f

        Couldn't erase tape, error -102 (trouble communicating)

        [*] devctrlrDevLogin: no login, refnum 0x207e

        [*] devctrlrInstMake: unavailable refnum 0x207e

    5/9/2023 2:47:29 PM: Execution stopped by operator

        Duration: 00:09:10 (00:09:10 idle/loading/preparing)

    5/9/2023 2:47:29 PM: Execution stopped by operator

    Total duration: 00:09:10 (00:09:10 idle/loading/preparing)

 

[Lennart_T]

The answer to question 1 is probably "source speed" as outlined here:

https://www.retrospect.com/au/support/kb/tape_capacity_faq

Your NAS is probably not fast enough to saturate the tape drive, resulting in empty sectors on the tape.

Now, question 2 is trickier. It looks like the PC is having trouble communication with the tape drive/loader. Maybe a new driver for the interface was installed on the PC that doesn't work properly?