Tape backups

[John Seth]

Well, it's been quite a hunt (and 4 hours of pacing back and forth in
search of tapes).  Turns out, the drive was ordered as a "backup drive" in
case any of the other croaked.  I have 40 tapes, all of an unuseable
format, which are meant for older tape drives in older systems.  I rifled
through about 120 tapes, in 2 offices, and found 1 data tape, and 1
cleaning tape.  Oh joy.

After a cleaning run, I tried the backup and it works.  Thanks for the
tips and suggestions.

  - Tony


On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Justin Bennett wrote:

> Have fun! It's always a blast, they change drives, technologies, tape
> types, and all that crap every 2 seconds, it's hard to stay on top of it.
> Especially now that everybody and their brother is making this stuff...
>
>
> John Seth said:
> > After doing a lot more research on Google (due to not finding an
> > "Exabyte 8900T" drive), apparently the one I have is an Exabyte Mammoth.
> >  I headed over to Exabyte's site with that info and the fact that the
> > tapes I have are "160mXL".  I'm not sure if my administrators are
> > backwards or what, but they claim the tapes they gave me work w/ that
> > drive. Exabyte says they're readable, but not writeable, and that the
> > drive should be using AME 170 tapes, and not Metal something-err-other,
> > which the 160's are.
> >
> > If what you say is true, and provided my admin's aren't nuts, I'm going
> > to try and rifle thru all the tapes we have to see if the drive will
> > work. Otherwise, it looks like I'll be ordering new tapes that Exabyte
> > recommends, and going from there.
> >
> > Thanks for the info... I remember you having issues with tape drives and
> > the media, so I'll be sure to keep that in mind while I pull my hair out
> > strand by strand.  ;)
> >
> >   - Tony
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Justin Bennett wrote:
> >
> >> from your logs it looks like the tape drive doesn't like the tape.
> >> There is no formating persay that the OS does, the tape drive does a
> >> little initilization on the tape when it's new. Nothing the OS does or
> >> you need to worry about. Sometimes you can't switch tapes from one
> >> tape drive to another, even if they are the same tape type. I have a
> >> DLT80 and DLT1 drive, both use DLT4 tapes, but once a tape is placed
> >> in a DLT1 drive it can't be used in the DLT80 with out being degaused
> >> (wiped clean with a magnetic device) due to the initilization done by
> >> the DLT1. Not to say thats the problem here, but have you tried other
> >> tapes? Maybe a new one, also may want to run a cleaing tape if it's
> >> been sitting around.
> >>
> >> John Seth said:
> >> > Recently I've gone from a standalone PC with no SCSI, 256MB of RAM,
> >> and an AMD 350 CPU to a Quad Processor Xeon 733 w/ 2GB of RAM, and
> >> plenty of raid disk space (Dell rackmount systems).  However, this
> >> system doesn't have a tape backup, and isn't attached to my
> >> company's main tape auto-mounter.  I plugged in an Exabyte 8900T
> >> that was lying around collecting dust into an available scsi port
> >> and can do the rewind/eject thing with MT, however up to this point,
> >> I've never needed to do my own backups to tape (I backup my own
> >> server via FTP nightly after using tar/gunzip).
> >> >
> >> > When I try to create a new backup via tar to the tape, it crashes,
> >> or dumps.  When I look at the console, I get some info that makes
> >> little sense to me.  Since I'm basically a newbie at backing up to
> >> tape, I'm wondering if anyone has some ideas on where I can start.
> >> Do I need to format the tape?  and if so, how do I do it?  This
> >> system is running RH 8.0 with no Xwin...
> >> >
> >> > Secondly, on my own personal system, I installed an old floppy tape
> >> drive, and wonder if anyone has any ideas for me on where to start
> >> with that... Forgive me for sounding desperate, the TLDP website is
> >> good, but there's just so much out there, that I'm beginning to be
> >> overwhelmed by opinions and ideas.  My system is running Slackware
> >> 8, so there's no such thing as 'amanda'...
> >> >
> >> > Any tips, pointers, and suggestions are welcome :)
> >> >
> >> > Thanks,
> >> >
> >> >    Tony
> >> >
> >> > ---
> >> > Dell system errors from Exabyte 8900T drive:
> >> >
> >> > Apr  9 15:26:57 ebonite kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Current
> >> st09:00: sense key Illegal Request Apr  9 15:26:57 ebonite kernel:
> >> Additional sense indicates Cannot write medium - incompatible format
> >> Apr
> >> >  9 15:26:57 ebonite kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Current
> >> st09:00:
> >> > sense key Illegal Request Apr  9 15:26:57 ebonite kernel: Additional
> >> sense indicates Cannot write medium - incompatible format Apr  9
> >> 15:26:57 ebonite kernel: st0: Error on write filemark.
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> -------------------------------------------
> >> Justin Bennett
> >> Red Hat (Linux) Certified Engineer
> >> Network Administrator
> >> Dynabrade Inc.
> >> 8989 Sheridan Dr
> >> Clarence, NY 14031
> >> 716-631-0100 ext 215
>
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------
> Justin Bennett
> Red Hat (Linux) Certified Engineer
> Network Administrator
> Dynabrade Inc.
> 8989 Sheridan Dr
> Clarence, NY 14031
> 716-631-0100 ext 215
>
>