Lost VCRs occur when an action fails to finish and the tape isn't closed
properly :  the VCR is rewritten on a tape at dismount.  Sometimes this is
caused when there is a hardware fault on the drive.  Sometimes it is casused
when there is a I/O or media failure.  Sometimes it is caused by poor
microcode.  At Version 3 (and I think 2.1.5.18) ADSM detects and rewrites
lost VCRs at mount time (as Debbie says) and this saves the administrator a
lot of time.

As far as I know there is no fix in V3 to prevent lost VCRs, so maybe your
drives are just performing better, or you have microcode in the drives that
is behaving better.  We went through a long period with our 3590s, getting
too many lost VCRs for our liking, before we got the microcode fixed.

Regards, Sheelagh
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheelagh Treweek                         Email: sheelagh.treweek AT oucs.ox.ac 
DOT uk
Sheelagh Treweek                         Email: sheelagh.treweek AT oucs.ox.ac 
DOT uk
Oxford University Computing Services     Tel:   +44 (0)1865 273205
13 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6NN, UK     Fax:   +44 (0)1865 273275
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From owner-adsm-l AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU  Thu Jun  4 19:22:09 1998
> From owner-adsm-l AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU  Thu Jun  4 19:22:09 1998
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1998 14:24:31 -0400
> From: "Weeks, Debbie" <debbie AT ADMIN.USF DOT EDU>
> Subject: Re: Lost VCR DATA-3570/3575
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
>
> We had a similar problem, minus the cleaning cartridge part, and the
> resolution was not hardware related.  The problem was reportedly fixed
> by our upgrade to version 3, but fixed just means that it won't happen
> to any new tapes. We were told that the only thing that repairs the lost
> VCR data is a subsequent mount of those tapes.  Since we have gone to
> version 3 we see the "lost VCR" message when one of the effected tapes
> is requested, and the mount is delayed for about 45 minutes while the
> data is repaired.  From what I can tell there have been no new instances
> since the upgrade, we just have to wait for all the old ones to get
> cleaned up.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> > Subject: Lost VCR DATA--3570/3575
> > Author:  "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT vm.marist DOT edu> at INTERNET
> > Date:    5/21/98 9:43 AM
> >
> >
> > We have ADSM 2.1.5.13 - A 3466 Netstore with 3570/3575 drives.
> >
> > We had some drives that needed cleaning but the cleaning cartridge was
> > not in
> > the tape silo -- therefore, when tapes were read we received the
> > following
> > message:
> >
> > 05/21/1998 09:38:59  ANR8776W Volume 164543 in drive RMT3 (/dev/rmt3)
> > contains lost VCR data; performance may be degraded.
> >
> > The IBM CE came out and worked on the physical box, we thought the
> > problem
> > was fixed.  Then when the tape drive mounted the tapes with VCR lost
> > data on
> > them, we get an I/O error - LOCA
> > TE error -- then ADSM just hangs.
> >
> > I am opening a PMR this morning with IBM - but thought I'd throw this
> > out
> > there to see if anyone else experienced this problem and has any
> > recommendations....Thanks.
> >
>