Toranaga1866 Posted October 26, 2006 Report Share Posted October 26, 2006 I'm repeatedly recieving error -206 (bad media/dirty heads) with tapes that up until last week were working fine. I've tried cleaning the heads and switching the tapes out thus far to no avail. With my most recent test, I swapped in a full set of 10 tapes, had retrospect scan them to see that they weren't the old tapes, assigned them to a tape backup set, and ran a snapshot transfer script to transfer the most recent snapshots from each of 6 other backup sets (that backed up to a local Raid Drive) to the tape drive. It seemed to work fine as it progressed through the first 2 tapes in the set, but when it got to tape 3 I recieved error -206 again, likewise when it tried tapes: 4,5,6,8,9,10; though I was surprised to see it successfully transfer to tape 7... I was wondering if there was a tape formatting process in Retrospect that I may have skipped and that is causing all these errors? Or do you suspect my tapes or tape drive itself are in fact faulty?(they are rather old). Any advice is most appreciated as I've had Retrospect for over a month now and have not yet gotten a successful snapshot transfer from the disk to tape. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 27, 2006 Report Share Posted October 27, 2006 Quote: I was wondering if there was a tape formatting process in Retrospect that I may have skipped and that is causing all these errors? Probably not. There were some early tape technologies back in the ancient days (when my hair wasn't gray) that required formatting. No recent tapes do. You don't mention what tape technology or drive you have. But it would be a great surprise if you had one of the ancient types, because you cannot buy tape for them any longer. Quote: Or do you suspect my tapes or tape drive itself are in fact faulty?(they are rather old). yes. Have you tried to run diagnostics on your tape drive? Most manufacturers have a diagnostic program that can read/write a tape and report on the health of your tape drive subsystem. Retrospect is not a diagnostic, and it really needs a working backup device or it barfs. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toranaga1866 Posted November 2, 2006 Author Report Share Posted November 2, 2006 I'm using a Qualstar TLS-4000 tape mover, and a Sony AIT-2 tape drive. Do you know if this is even supported by retrospect anymore? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted November 2, 2006 Report Share Posted November 2, 2006 Quote: I'm using a Qualstar TLS-4000 tape mover, and a Sony AIT-2 tape drive. Do you know if this is even supported by retrospect anymore? The database of supported devices is here: Retrospect supported devices I see many TLS-4xxx autoloaders, but not the TLS-4000. Is that the right number? Likewise, there are several Sony AIT-2 drives. What is the full model number? Find out the details, look in the database of supported devices. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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