LTO backup drive failing?

I have an external IBM Ultrium LTO drive - 3580-003, attached to an i5 520 that I *think* might be failing. The last three mornings the backup job has been stuck in an EVTW status with the drive's activity light blinking. The job log shows that only the first library has been saved. My guess is that it's attempting to write the library to tape, but the tape is just spinning. The only thing I can think that I did different is that I actually cleaned it with a cleaning cartridge the day before this began. Yes, I've cleaned it before, with the same cartridge, about 6 months ago...

The backup job is just a CL that begins with SAVLIB *ALLUSR, then does a SAVDLO, SAVSECDTA, SAVCFG, and SAV. The backup normally takes around 3 hours to finish completely, but it is getting stuck on this first library for over 5 hours. (We're a really, really small shop)

There are no obvious errors that I can find. After some digging, I found the Service Action Log in the Hardware Service Manager of SST, and two NEW entries are shown here for both resource DC03 and TAP02 (which is the problem drive). So I guess that is proof that *something* is wrong.

My next step is to place a service request with IBM, but thought I would post here to see if anyone had any ideas what might be wrong. The tape drive was purchased used almost two years ago.

Thanks for any input.

Bob Cagle
IT Manager
Lynk, Inc.