I don't know if the "mt -f drive retension" will do much good with
different tape technologies.  What led us to that command was a write up
on Sony's website specific to read problems with AIT tapes.  I don't
know how useful this might be with other tape technologies.

Good luck - and keep us posted.

-Teresa


-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of George Sinclair
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 5:01 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Problem reading tape labels?

Teresa Biehler wrote:
> 
> - The drive is having problems and needs to be cleaned or replaced.
> When we get a lot of these errors on a single drive, we replace the
> drive and they go away.

Quantum seemed reticent to want to replace the drives until after 
upgrading the firmware. I got the impression that if I upgraded the 
firmware and was still having problems they'd be more responsive to 
doing that, and I can see their point, too, so maybe that's worth a 
shot, but the drives are getting old, too, so your point is quite valid.

> 
> - The tape needs to be retensioned.  We're using AIT3 tapes and they
> seem to be pretty sensitive.  Running "mt -f retension" on the tape
> often resolves the problem.

I've never used that option with 'mt', but that's worth a shot. Would be

interesting to see if it improves things after, say, an 'nsrjb' fails to

read the label using '-I' or '-p'.

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