On Jan 19,  3:07pm, Virginia Adams wrote:
> Subject: Need Help with Tape Drive Situation
> Dear ADSMers: I am running ADSM Version 1, Release 1, level 0.8/1.8
> on VM/ESA 1.2.2 (with Sterling vm:tape), and am backing up just one
> sun/unix server so far, having begun doing so just last week.
>
> Previously the cartridge mounts were all going to our 3480 drives,
> but yesterday I made a change to the dsmmount exec so that the 3490E
> drives would be used instead. Last night we got the error message:
> ANR5306E Device not capable. (It had mounted a cartridge on the 3490E
> drive that had been previously written on the 3480 drive but wasn't
> yet 100% full.)
>
> So I cancelled the session and went back to the previous version of
> the dsmmount exec which calls for the 3480 drive. Now we get (from
> the dsmmount exec) VMTDRV143T System not configured with 36 track E
> 3480 drives, and mount cancelled. I am puzzled why this didn't work
> when it was working the past week.
>
> Can anyone advise me on how to resolve this? Do I have to
> reinitialize the database and start over to switch from 3480 to 3490E
> drives? After failing with the 3490E drive, why couldn't I return to
> the 3480 drive successfully? What should I do next to get a
> successful backup?
>
> Thanks, -Virginia
> Virginia Adams
> New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
> 50 Wolf Road - Room 143,  Albany, NY 12233-2753
> virginia.adams AT dec.mailnet.state.ny DOT us
> (518) 457-7606
>-- End of excerpt from Virginia Adams

Virginia

Not sure I know exactly how to get you back.  But do you realize that
while a 3490E can read a 3480 18 track tape- it cannot write in 18 track modes
to a 3480 or 3490E cartridge ??  That is why you couldn't use the 3490E to
continue to
fill up that 3480 cartridge.

Given this limitation, I think that if you are going to switch drive types, you
will have to mark all un-full (don't think that's a real word) 3480 tapes as
FULL so that ADSM will not try to mount them to write to them again and fill
them up.  Then when tapes are recycled, ADSM can read the 3480's on the 3490E's
combine the unexpired data from several tapes and write the data out to a
3490E.

For your error after switching back... it sounds like your ADSM device driver
still thinks it is trying to use a 36 track tape drive, but has a 3480 and
knows
that can only write in 18 track mode.
Call IBM and ask how to get back to 3480 mode, then mark all those tapes full
and move forward again to 3490E mode.
Susie McClure
RICE University