IBM LTO3-060 with Amber Fault light

Question

I have been using an LTO3-060 HH drive for a while now in a Precision workstation running Backup Exec 2010 on Windows 2003R2 with relatively no issues.  After my last monthly backup the drive suddenly is flashing an Amber Fault light and will not respond through windows.  When I power off the workstation and back on the drive begins POST and after a few seconds the amber light for Fault comes back on.  I can insert and remove tapes fine, but the drive will not respond. I downloaded the ITDT utility and ran a scan which cannot find the drive.  I stopped all BE services and still nothing.  I also replaced the SCSI card and still no change.  I did notice that the drive when detected by the SCSI card instead of stating 'IBM Ultrium'  just states 'IB    UL' so I am thinking a firmware issue?   Any thoughts on what I can try next?

DELL-Sam L · Accepted Answer

Hello Jim,

If the drive doesn’t login to itself that is why the scsi card see the drive that way. You need the drive to be seen by an OS in order to flash the firmware on the drive. It is most likely that there is an issue with the drives firmware and without being able to get the drive seen by the OS that the drive will need to be replaced.

Let us know if have any other questions.

JimSm · Answer

Yes, I performed a drive reset. All of the lights went on and it started going through POST again and returned to the amber fault light.

You mentioned not returning to the home position. Would this prevent tapes from loading/unloading to the device? I am able to load tapes and they load/unload as expected so I was not thinking it was a mechanical issue. Plus, the fact that the SCSI card does not recognize the drive properly leads me to believe its a firmware issue. Are you aware of any ways of updating the firmware or resetting the firmware on the drive?

Thanks

Jim

DELL-Sam L · Answer

Hello JimSm,

Have you held in the eject button for 20 seconds until the system reboots and see if the amber light goes away? If you still get an amber light after resetting the tape drive then it is looking like the drive is dead as it is not going to the home position so the drive will go online so your server will see it.

Let us know if have any other questions.

JimSm · Answer

I did talk to Dell support and the technician confirmed that the firmware seems corrupted and even if we could flash the drive there seems to be an underlying hardware defect that would not bring the drive back to operating condition.

Thanks for the help.

PowerVault

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