On Sunday 28 January 2007 11:55, Kirk Strauser wrote: >I have a Seagate DDS4 drive on a FreeBSD 6.2 server: > >$ dmesg | grep ^sa >sa0 at sym0 bus 0 target 6 lun 0 >sa0: <SEAGATE DAT 9SP40-000 912L> Removable Sequential Access SCSI-3 > device sa0: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 16, 16bit) > >It's been working perfectly for a couple of years when using it and > Amanda to make backups to the DDS3 tapes it inherited from the tape > drive it replaced. However, I just recently went in on a set of Fuji > DDS4 tapes with my employer. Those tapes work perfectly in the > office's DDS4 drive (name/model not available to me as I write this), > but do nothing more than make my drive grind along until it starts > flashing the cleaning light. > >One thing I've wondered about is the mysterious set of undocumented DIP >switches on the bottom of the drive. The manual gives a list of OSes > and the correct settings but doesn't actually explain what they do. > Since it doesn't include the positions for FreeBSD (but does for Novell > 4.11 - go figure), I'm been using the Linux settings and hoping for the > best. Do any FreeBSD users have this model and an idea of what they > should be set on? I don't have any idea if that would even make a > difference, but without having any clue what they actually do, who > knows. > >Many thanks to anyone who can shed a little light on this. In the worst > case, I'll keep using it as a DDS3 drive. Still, I paid for DDS4 and > would kind of like having the options to use it.
If its already had 2 years use, its possible the heads may be worn enough to fail on the higher density tape, Kirk. I did use dds2's at one time and never got more than 400 passes from any of the drives in Seagate 4586n changers, here. I switched to vtapes Sept 16 2004 and haven't had a bit of trouble with that 200GB WD drive they are on 170GB of. All drives here pretty much spin 24/7/365. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2007 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
