[Hari Krishna pune]

@ Tim Gerhard

Thank you for your concern. I can understand without seeing the drive one can not estimate the issue.

As I am checking from yesterday I am getting multiple results with multiple tapes.

The first test I did is with a used tape, I copied the data of 400gb to it and didn’t occupied any extra space. Thought it solved.
The next test I did with a new tape. I copied the data of 2TB and the tape is filled. Only 4gb space is left. It’s just better than 1.5TB.
Later I did another test with another tape I can able to copy up to 2.31TB and another 100GB space left. It’s cool actually. But its taking around 10 hours to finish a tape writing. I still don’t know whether the problem exist or not. Just doing some more tests continuously.
Yesterday I have also run the performance test using code “F” in the drive again. Still has the same error.
As I am writing data to tape I am getting a weird noise like iron squeaking from the drive.

I will post the latest results as well.

HARI KRISHNA PUNE
FCP EDITOR & ARCHIVE MANAGER

[Hari Krishna pune]

@Jerzy Zbyslaw, @Neil Sadwelkar, @Tim Gerhard

I Thank you for all your suggestions. I think I have overcome with the issue.

After enter to the maintenance mode as I said earlier I first run the drive diagnosis code “1” and test head code “H”.

And then run code “6” – Host interface wrap test by connecting to the sas port 1 and the result turned with error code “8”, Then I checked again by connecting to port 2 then the result is good.

Hope the sas port 1 has issues. Then I run code “F” to check performance. I got error with the error code “A” even I connected the drive to sas port 2. I tried it twice but got the same error.

So I went out of the maintenance mode and put a copy to test with a data of 300gb red raw footage. It just occupies the same 300gb. But the speed is low it seems, It took one hour to copy 300gb.

First thing I have issue with space. So that has been solved. I am going to check with a full tape. After it’s done. I will get back to the forum with the results. Let’s hope everything good.

Thanks once again to every one of you.

HARI KRISHNA PUNE
FCP EDITOR & ARCHIVE MANAGER

[Hari Krishna pune]

@Tim Gerhard

I took that advice to clean the drive multiple times from the below link or else I couldn’t have done that.
https://serverfault.com/questions/857771/what-could-cause-an-lto-drive-to-write-at-half-its-capacity

You people are so lucky coz you have so many guys there who can provide service for such kind of drives. But I am sitting in India. Couldn’t find one useful. Found two guys who doesn’t even tested the drive, but through the symptoms I have shared they said the head is gone. But I still can still read and write the tapes. I tried to reach IBM for its service. But they said the drive is out of warranty, so they can provide paid service. But they wanted me to pay 35% of the drive cost for the “initial onsite assessment to obtain problem” and the service charges would be vary as per the issue. I don’t know if it can be solved or not? I didn’t replied them yet to confirm the service.

I am just trying to figure it out through the Setup, Operater & Service Guide I got when I purchased the drive.
I couldn’t connect to https://169.254.0.3 through the Ethernet service port they provided in the rear.
So I tried maintenance mode with code “1”. Result is good. No errors found by the end of the test.
Then I tried code “H” to check for head errors. But I found nothing test is done in 120 minutes like they mentioned in the manual and went back to the normal status.

Planning to run code “F” to check the write performance test. Let’s see the results.

HARI KRISHNA PUNE
FCP EDITOR & ARCHIVE MANAGER

[Hari Krishna pune]

@Neil Sadwelkar

Thanks for your concern. Yes, I am writing to tape as LTFS. And I am doing copy-paste in windows explorer. I am not using any software.

I am an FCP EDITOR. I have tried this with both mac and windows.

HARI KRISHNA PUNE
FCP EDITOR & ARCHIVE MANAGER

[Hari Krishna pune]

I forgot one thing to mention. So bad. At first I started to notice some line in the terminal window while I format a tape. While formatting the tape at the bottomline of “writing index to a”, “writing index to b” I noticed a line saying “failed to release the advisory block”. Have any one seen this before?

HARI KRISHNA PUNE
FCP EDITOR & ARCHIVE MANAGER

[Hari Krishna pune]

@Jerzy Zbyslaw
Thanks for the suggestion. I will follow the path and let’s try.

HARI KRISHNA PUNE
FCP EDITOR & ARCHIVE MANAGER

[Hari Krishna pune]

Hi, Thanks for your explanation. Yeah you are right, If I am using an backup application I may know about the soft errors. But in my case I am not using one.

I ran the health test & full write test using IBM tape diagnostic tool a while back. Please see the attached images for the test results. I ran the test multiple time by changing the drive firmware also. Still stuck with Performance failed message.

As you said it might be the issue with the tape – for that I am not using any old tapes here in this case. All the tapes are brand new. Also providing the consistency check and rollback pics. Please refer.

And in the matter of cleaning head I never did it on purpose, But I did it when ever my drive shows an error code “C” in the single character display. After got this issue I have seen an post from another blog and tried to hard clean with multiple times. Still getting the same issue. Yesterday I tried running cleaning cartridge for up to 10times and then make some data transfer. And the result is I have copied the data of 1.1TB and is showing that 1.35TB occupied in the tape.

HARI KRISHNA PUNE
FCP EDITOR & ARCHIVE MANAGER

[Hari Krishna pune]

@Jerzy Zbyslaw
Thanks for your quick reply. I am not a professional to understand the coding language. Forgive my ignorance and please explain check soft error numbers. Thank you.

HARI KRISHNA PUNE
FCP EDITOR & ARCHIVE MANAGER