Quantum LTO-4 Drive fails with new tapes and need to be cleaned too often

Question

I have a Quantum LTO-4 HH Original Drive, and recently i'm getting a lot of problems with tapes.

For a long time every 3-5 tapes, the drive asks me for a cleaning tape, but lately the drive needs to be cleaned very often (every 2 tapes, and sometimes only one and it even stops in the middle of a tape). I thought that the problem were the tapes because they have been used a lot of times, then I bought new tapes.

The problem now is that new tapes are unusable, because after 5-6 GB of backup, the drive gets dirty and asks for a cleaning tape. I've tested 4 tapes (Sony and Quantum) of 2 different providers, and all of them fail. After the first "disaster" of new tapes (Sony) I was able to backup one full old tape, but now after the second "disaster" (Quantum tapes), even the old tape fails after 5-6GB.

Shall I replace the unit or can it be solved with a "manual" cleaning?

If the latter, do I need any special product for a manual cleaning?

Answer 1

Use common sense. Replace the unit or leverage the manufacturer/warranty contacts.

The behavior you're experiencing is not common or acceptable. Imagine this were a common kitchen appliance like a microwave or your refrigerator. Would you tolerate a weekly failure of those?

Nope...

So apply the same logic to your malfunctioning tape drive :)

Answer 2

Always stick to one brand of tapes. Different manufacturers use different coatings which can interact and require additional cleaning.

However in this case it sounds like the drive needs to be serviced or replaced.

Answer 3

Replacing the tapes was probably a bad idea. Back in the days where I was administrating LTO-4 drives it was entirely normal for brand new tapes to be covered in a tiny amount of debris left over from the manufacturing process.

The dirt entering the drives through these new tapes may have been the final blow to your drives. I have seen that happen hundreds of times.

The first symptom of a drive suffering this fate is a decrease in write speed and tape capacity. Usually I would see the capacity slowly decreasing from 830GB to 780GB and then quickly decrease to around 600GB. The write speed would tend to be 120MB/s in one direction and 60MB/s in the other direction. At that point replacing the drive is recommendable.

As recommended by the vendor I would try a manual cleaning of drives under those circumstances. But the problem would always persist, and I had to replace the drive anyway.

One vendor promised to develop a method for cleaning the tapes before first usage. But I moved on to other work before I saw the results.

Answer 4

I know this is an older thread, but still seems pertinent... another thing to consider (although unlikely since the problem was not happening all along) is that the firmware on all of the tape drives should be the same. Levelling the firmware after a drive installation/replacement is a good idea.