RS 6.5 Pro drive waiting after start 2nd tape, format issues ?

[7tronics]

Using RS 6.5 Pro, when doing first full backup on approx 8GB using SCSI Exabyte 8505 (5GB/10GB) tape drives (yes, I know, older tape technology, but its what we've got...).

 

 

 

The second tape gets to a spot and just hangs with "waiting on media" prompt in status under "Executing" tab in status window. There is drive activity, but after several hours in this state, I PAUSEd backup, ejected tape, and re-inserted. Then un-PAUSEd the backup. After a few minutes, the state was back to same "waiting on media" prompt. Tried this a second time, but managed to jiggle the SCSI connector and got BSOD (blue screen of death) on W2K, so rebooted.

 

 

 

These are new tapes, but I think I checked off the "8505" when formatting rather than "8505c". The 2 tapes in this set are 112m length, thus should support the 5GB uncompr/10GB compr (ha). First tape has a bit over 6.5GB.

 

 

 

There were 4 Windows "drives" in the backup set, the problems are in the 4th drive (all FAT but the first which was NTFS).

 

 

 

What should I do next ? Should I RECREATE the backup set catalog first, then initiate a new backup of the last drive onto a new tape and add to this backup set ? The 8505s are not the fastest in the world - the backup/compare cycle here has taken a bit over 8 hours so far on this backup of the local machine.

 

 

 

UPDATE: the drive was in the midst of performing the COMPARE, so data and snapshot had been stored. How do (and should) I initiate a COMPARE manually ?

 

 

 

Next up, planning the backup/restore strategy for the remote clients of this machine.

 

 

 

Thanks for suggestions,

 

 

[natew]

Hi

 

If you got a blue screen the problem is likely not the tape. Check your SCSI cables and termination and make sure the Windows device driver for your tape drive is disabled (not unintstalled) in the device manager.

 

You cannot start a compare again but you can do a media verify from the tools menu. It will check that the data on the tape matches that in the catalog file.

 

Nate