RE: LTO backup drive failing?

Try a VARY ON with a reset on the device. If that does not work you might have to restart the IOP.

It's rare but sometimes the cable is the problem. Vary off the device, and turn off the drive. Pull the cables and inspect the pins on both ends. If any pins are missing or bent, then the cable is the problem and it will need to be replaced. If there are missing pins, look on the drive to see if the pin broke off in the tape device. If it did and you can grab it with a tool to remove it, that's good, If not Drive is dead. Assuming nothing is visibly wrong with the cable re-plug everything in and try it again.

Failing all that, the drive died.

My best guess, the IOP needs a reset, 90% + of the times that's the problem.

--
Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bob Cagle
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2015 11:28 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: LTO backup drive failing?

No, LED panel is blank.

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roberto José Etcheverry Romero
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2015 6:39 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: LTO backup drive failing?

When you say blinking, did the Drive's LED panel have any digit on it?

On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 7:32 PM, Roger Harman <roger.harman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Devd damaged?


Perhaps delete the device and recreate? I don't recall if it was V5.3
or V5.4, I had to delete the device and IPL for it to
auto-discover/auto-config. There was some issue that wouldn't let me
recreate it manually.



Roger Harman
COMMON Certified Application Developer – ILE RPG on IBM i on Power
OCEAN User Group

<http://www.ocean400.org>






----------------------------------------

From: bcagle@xxxxxxxxxxx
To: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: LTO backup drive failing?
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2015 17:04:27 +0000

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.

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