On Sunday 28 January 2007 11:55, Kirk Strauser wrote:
>I have a Seagate DDS4 drive on a FreeBSD 6.2 server:
>
>$ dmesg | grep ^sa
>sa0 at sym0 bus 0 target 6 lun 0
>sa0: <SEAGATE DAT    9SP40-000 912L> Removable Sequential Access SCSI-3
> device sa0: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 16, 16bit)
>
>It's been working perfectly for a couple of years when using it and
> Amanda to make backups to the DDS3 tapes it inherited from the tape
> drive it replaced. However, I just recently went in on a set of Fuji
> DDS4 tapes with my employer.  Those tapes work perfectly in the
> office's DDS4 drive (name/model not available to me as I write this),
> but do nothing more than make my drive grind along until it starts
> flashing the cleaning light.
>
>One thing I've wondered about is the mysterious set of undocumented DIP
>switches on the bottom of the drive.  The manual gives a list of OSes
> and the correct settings but doesn't actually explain what they do. 
> Since it doesn't include the positions for FreeBSD (but does for Novell
> 4.11 - go figure), I'm been using the Linux settings and hoping for the
> best.  Do any FreeBSD users have this model and an idea of what they
> should be set on?  I don't have any idea if that would even make a
> difference, but without having any clue what they actually do, who
> knows.
>
>Many thanks to anyone who can shed a little light on this.  In the worst
> case, I'll keep using it as a DDS3 drive.  Still, I paid for DDS4 and
> would kind of like having the options to use it.

If its already had 2 years use, its possible the heads may be worn enough 
to fail on the higher density tape, Kirk.  I did use dds2's at one time 
and never got more than 400 passes from any of the drives in Seagate 
4586n changers, here.  I switched to vtapes Sept 16 2004 and haven't had 
a bit of trouble with that 200GB WD drive they are on 170GB of.  All 
drives here pretty much spin 24/7/365.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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