Tape errors (206) that go away if I change the files selected for manual backup

[philx509]

I use Retrospect 6.0 Professional on a homebuilt Win 2000 system. My backup device is an Edabyte 8720 (internal). Since I started using Retrospect about 4 months ago, I have had some 206 errors (bad media, dirty heads).

 

At first, I simply used a different tape whenever I got this error. Then I once got 4 bad tapes in a row, which all failed at the exact same point in my backup (at 1.6 GB). These were new, out of the box, and had never been used. It seems really unlikely that this problem was with the tapes. Naturally, I ran a cleaning tape through the drive after each error, but that didnt' help.

 

Then I changed the backup job, which was a manual section, from one job to two jobs.

 

What is really happening here?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

philx509

[AmyJ]

The Dantz Knowledgebase has multiple articles on error 206 and how to resolve it. Go to www.dantz.com/knowledgebase and search for 206 to get results.

 

 

[philx509]

Quote:

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AmyJ said:

The Dantz Knowledgebase has multiple articles on error 206 and how to resolve it. Go to

www.dantz.com/knowledgebase

and search for 206 to get results.

 

 

 

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Amy,

 

Thanks, but I have been around tape drives a looong time, and I always keep my drives cleaned on a regular basis. I also did the search for 206 and found advice that pretty much echos what I already do, plus some discussion about bugs in the Mac version of Retrospect (which I don't use ...)

 

Again, the weird part is that I got the same error in the same same part of the backup job job with four tapes in a row. Yet when I changed the files I selected for backup, all four tapes worked fine with no errors. And, all these tapes were new and never used before.

 

Weird, huh?