It all depends on what type of tape drive and if it's hot swappable. If you do a lsdev can you see the tape drive as a listed device? how long has the system been up? I'm not that failure with AIX and the hardware it runs on. When I used to work on HP-UX systems. You could get away with hot plugging a directly attached tape drive. As long as you did a ioscan and it picked up the same type of device on the same SCSI path. If you look at each file system and don't see any full FS paths. An you are able to do a full backup of the data. I don't see why yo couldn't shutdown the machine and power it back up.
-mmiller On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 11:18 AM, French, Derek <[email protected]> wrote: > I have a Unix AIX 5.1 machine with an external tape drive that no longer > responds to SMIT commands, like verify tape backup or eject or anything. It > gives me a “Tape Busy” error, or “Cannot open” or “No such device,” although > the tape drive is still listed as “defined,” so I’m guessing it’s a hardware > defective issue? I have tried other tapes, to no avail. I really don’t want > to turn off the Unix machine if at all possible because of the data, but I > DEFINITELY don’t want to damage the Unix machine either. 1) Can I shut off > just the tape drive, open the case, and insert a new tape drive which > damaging my Unix box? 2) Can I turn off the tape drive, disconnect the SCSI > cable from the tape drive, and replace it with a new tape external drive > without damaging the Unix box? Couple people have said it’s ok, but manuals > I read so NO. Any suggestions on determining the drive not responding? Or > would just rebooting solve the problem? Thanks a bunch! > > > > Derek > > > > _______________________________________________ > EUGLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug > > _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
