PV 122T Error Code BF

Question

Hello, During the last 2 weeks I had to change one of our PV122T Tape Devices because the Error BF was occurring in the display! I received a new Device from DELL but this one was starting up with this error code without doing anything… This happens during the last two weeks for 5 times…. (Hope u are able to understand) DELL is not able to find the reason! They only send us a new device and we receive the same error… I replaced the tapes with new tapes from dell and I received the Error BF. The Tape Drive is connected to a PE2850 and the system is running 2003 server with ARCServ. The whole system is 6 weeks old! I don’t know how to proceed….. Did anyone have the same problems, or a solution…or an idée which can be the reason for that? Thanks

De La Soul · Answer

Hiya's!   BF error huh??? Uhm.....   Well the BF range error usually incidates there was some type of fatal error with the drive itself. In order to figure out what is going on, what type of 122T do you have? Is it VS80, LTO, etc... and what type of tapes you are using? Brand? andy damage to the tape's?   The tapes you are using may be the wrong tapes for that type of unit or the tapes may be damaged themselves. Go ahead and list your 122T type and the type of tape cartridges you are using. Also, when you get a replacement 122T onsite, I would clean the drive before performing any operations (with the correct cleaning tape).     Tootles, De La Soul

OSISupport · Answer

Hello,

it's an SDLT device. and we ordered the tapes direct from DELL ! Which are 100% the right ones.

The problem is that the drive will not ejekt a tape because it's thinking that it's empty but a tape is inside. We tested to ejekt this tape with the little switch inside on the drive itself.

We are now thinking that the problem is may be deoending on a bad production serie of the tapes....or something like that. We will change all our tapes on spare and hope that this was the error....

The new 122T we received yesterday has again an error message : Unable to clean a drive in 122t....

We have 3 of this 122T and the oldest one ist running good sice over 1 year...

the new two 122T from two months ago are buggy or the tapes...i don't know !

Thanks

De La Soul · Answer

Mhhh... I see.

Yep, good idea... go ahead and try a different set of tapes to see if the issue with KNOWN good tapes occurr on the 122t. If the tapes that are suspect are Dell tapes, call Dell to see if they will replacement that and explain the problem.

If you use known good SDLT tapes, and the issue is still present... you may have a bad tape device. First though, before you load tapes in the drive. Try this:

1) Load tapes in the data slots and run system tests from the diag menu and see if that passes.

2) Make sure you don't have the autoloader and tape drive on the same scsi ID's

3) When you clean a drive use the commands>>clean drive to clean the drive

Tootles,
De La Soul

OSISupport · Answer

Hello !

Just to give everybody an notice :

DELL will replace all our new 85 Tapes !

It's may be possible that some produced Tapes are bad !

Dell will escalate it to the manufactore of this tapes !

Thanks !

PowerVault

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