I am having troubles with my VXA tapes and thought I'd pass on some
signs, symptoms and a warning.
The warning: Don't powercycle the VXA drive with a tape in it. Ecrix
confirms that one is *likely* to destroy or lose some header
information and the tape *may* then be recognized by RS as ERASED.
There is no way to recover the umpteen gigs of info that are already
on the tape at this point. Let me hear you all say redundant backups
three times real fast right now!
The trouble: Lost communications between the computer and the VXA
drive. Backup will stall in the middle for various reasons (client
dropped off the network, 519 errors, slow response...). RS will still
be trying to run the backup and I've been able to stop the backup.
Upon starting any backup to the tape at this point, the VXA drive is
unrecognized (no SCSI drive recognition while RS scans the bus). I
then restarted the computer, and powercycled the drive (tape still in
it, as it wouldn't eject using the front panel). Tape is now
unrecognized by RS and is listed as "erased" when it is inserted.
Neither RS nor ECRIX have any solution (they reviewed the RS log
files and their own log files from the drive), although ECRIX said
they thought RS was working on communications problems with the
drive, this was not confirmed by RS support.
Haven't solved the communications problem yet, but if anyone has
suggestions, I'm looking for answers. Suspects are SCSI cables (easy
to check, just haven't traded them out yet).
System: beige G3, MacOS 9.0.4, RS 4.3, external VXA on built-in SCSI
bus with a CD-R following it on the same bus (cables are all short).
--
Bob Durst
Note my new e-mail address: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please update your address book to reflect the change.
Visit my web site: http://fst.orst.edu/bob_durst/
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