one backup-two dlt's

[mharbour]

I have a Benchmark DLT 7000 autoloader for the primary backup of 20 odd macs, located in an out of the way location but not exactly offsite. I also have a single DLT8000 in the office environment and I would like to use the single drive for file recovery. Can this be done? I have two legitimite copies of Workgroup 5, so...

 

I want to keep the artists off the main backup mac(7000) if at all possible. Did I mention I was one of the artist too?

 

 

 

By mounting the backup mac (7000) on the desktop of the 8000, I can access the catalogs, not the current catalog in use but older catalogs, set everything up and when the 7000 tapes are requested and read by the 8000, I get a media erased message. Skipping to the next tape gives the same message. I have verified that the 7000 taped do contain real data.

 

 

 

The primary mac is a G4 running 9.2.2 and we just call it the server but no other work is done on/with the machine, and the second is a PowerMac 8500.

 

 

 

Are those numbers "1:3" and "2:5", when a tape is in the drive, the amount of compression used by the drives?

 

 

 

I am unable to read any of the tapes from the 7000 in the 8000, and vice versa just in-case you wanted to know. The rev. #'s are 3213 for the 7000 and 010C for the 8000. Firmware update? Both drives are listed in the approved hardware list.

 

 

 

Any help is most appreciated.

[AmyJ]

DLT Tapes should be readable by other DLT mechanisms. That you are having difficulty with this could indicate problems with the alignment of your tape heads on one or both tape drives. In many cases, tapes written with an out of alignment drive can only be read by the original drive.

 

 

 

The "erased" status means that the drive cannot read the file header written by the original drive, and is incorrectly reporting that the media is erased.

 

 

 

You can try some standard SCSI troubleshooting to help isolate the problem further:

 

 

 

1) a dirty tape drive. Clean the tape heads.

 

 

 

2) another device on your SCSI bus is interfering with the tape drive's communication. Make sure your SCSI ID numbers are set correctly. Turn off your Mac and the SCSI devices. Disconnect all SCSI devices except for the tape drive.

 

 

 

3) 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.

 

 

 

4) 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.

 

 

 

5) the computer may be having a problem. Install Retrospect on another Macintosh and try the tape drive there as the lone SCSI device.

 

 

 

6) 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.

 

 

 

Also, the ID numbers you refered to ("1:3" and "2:5") are SCSI ID's numbers.