We ran into exactly the same issue with our TS3500 tape library a few years 
ago.  Unfortunately, the tech had to pull the drives and put the empty slots 
back in and let them be scanned so the library could see they were empty.  Then 
he was able to put the drives in again.

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
Benjamin Balk
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 8:58 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] "Ghost" Tape Drives and Slots

Hello,

We have a couple of aging TS3500/3584 tape libraries and are going through a 
process of consolidating what hardware we can into one single library using our 
faster drives and newer tapes.  During this process we, moved 4
E05 tape drives into a frame that previously held a cell of tapes.  When the 
tech who did the work pulled the tapes out, he didn't inventory the empty slots 
afterward to remove the tapes from the library inventory.  Now we have old 
records of tapes showing up in the library so any inventory of the library 
causes our gripper to crash into the drives that are in the frame where the 
tape slots used to be.

Is anyone aware of a way to manually clean this up through the front panel or 
web interface to save us from having to pull the drives out and re-insert the 
empty slots to scan them?

In order to get the tapes back into the library, I was able to override the 
volsers of the "ghost" tapes through the web interface so that we no longer 
have duplicate tapes in the inventory but I still can't get the old records to 
go away.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Ben


Ben Balk
Storage Engineer Senior
University of Michigan