ReUsing Media that was originally used in a different tape drive

Question

I have several DLT IV tapes that I used in one tape drive that I now want to use in a different tape drive.  I use Veritas Backup Exec v10.  They are showing up in the new tape drive as 'Bad Media' when I do an inventory.  Please let me know if there is a way to use these tapes in the new drive.  Below is the info on the 2 tape drives.   New Drive: PowerVault 120T DLT Autoloader 4000 with a Quantum 1 DLT 4000 drive. Drive type reported by BEv10: DLT32K (32K,10,0,HU)   Old Drive PowerVault 110T-DLT-VS80. Drive type reported by BEv10: DLT64K (64k,10,0,HU)   Thanks in advance.

Stumorc · Answer

Yes, I'm moving from a VS80 to a DLT4000.  The reason is that the VS80 drive was a single drive that I had on another server.  I've consolidated my backups to a central NAS and I'm backing up the NAS to the DLT4000 autoloader that I had at my main location.

DELL-Bob D · Answer

Are you really moving from the VS80 (old) to the DLT4000 (new) or was this a typo?

The VS80 drive can only read DLT4K tapes. The signal strength generated on the tape from the 4K drives is to powerful to overcome by the VS80 drive therefore it is unable to overwrite any data that is on the tape.

I would expect the 4K drive to be able to erase and re-use a VS80 generated tape but being that it is an older generation of drive I'm not sure it can accomplish that. Most drives are backwards compatable not foward compatable.

Hope this helps

Dev Mgr · Answer

Keep in mind that the VS80 used an LVD or SE scsi controller (e.g. 39160), but the PV120T DLT4K (and 7K) have to use an HVD scsi controller (e.g. 2944 or 3944).

Stumorc · Answer

Yeah, I'm using an Adaptec AHA-2944 UW PCI SCSI card in the box that is hosting the PV120T DLT4K.

PowerVault

ReUsing Media that was originally used in a different tape drive

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