We've started to notice some very slow tape processing on some Gen2 Tape
Drives in our 3584.



Running TSM 5.1.6.4 on Windows 2000

3584 with Gen2 drives SCSI connected via 39160 Card

Library firmware is 34B0

Drive firmware is 3AP0

Ultrium Driver is 5.0.6.7

39160 Driver is 6.1.6300.100



We've been running with this hardware for over 6 months with no problems.
Last firmware upgrade was in Nov 14th, 2003 (library and drives).



We have just started (last 3 weeks) to see some slow Tape Processing at
times:

In one instance a client restore was taking hours to run for a couple of
files.  It would take forever to mount the tape and if you cancelled the
restore it would take 20 minutes to dismount the tape.  Move Data had
similar problems.  Once the data was moved to another tape the restore ran
in a couple of minutes.



When the suspect Tape was used again processing was normal.



When these problems occur it seems all processing in the tape library is
affected.  No other mounts get done (or they take 20 minutes to mount a
tape).



We talked to IBM about this and they said it sounded like a corrupt VTOC on
the tape and to manually mount and dismount the tape and this would rebuild
the VTOC.  This did seem to solve the problem for one tape.  But we have had
others with similar problems now.  And even if it does solve the problems
why are we getting corrupt VTOC's?



Just wondering if anyone has run into a situation like this?



Thanks,



Tim Rushforth

City of Winnipeg