Re: Tape backup failures

Hi Jeremy:

You might have more eyes, and therefore more sucess in the SBS 2003 group. This is for SBS 2000.

However, here is a possible fix from MS CSS:

<snip>
By the way, In order to sharing our experience with the other users and
help them to search/find specific answers more efficiently in the future, I
would like to make a summary here:

Problem description:
NTbackup failed because of that the tape media library will not get ready
by itself after each backup while using Exabyte VXA-3 SCSI tape drive as
backup device

Cause:
RSM did not recognizing the media correctly

Resolution:
1. Click Start\Run and type notepad to open notepad.
2. Added following content to the notepad:
start /wait rsm.exe refresh /lf"Exabyte VXA-3 SCSI Tape Drive"
start /wait rsm.exe inventory /lf"Exabyte VXA-3 SCSI Tape Drive" /afull
sleep 60
3. Click File\Save as to save the content to a bat file.
4. Go to Control Pane\Scheduled Tasks, and click Add Scheduled Task.
5. Following the wizard and at the first stage click Browse to add the
batch file as a scheduled task before the back up work.

Thanks again for your time and cooperation.
Have a nice day! :-)

Best regards,
Gary Wang(MSFT)
<endsnip>

--
Larry
Please post the resolution to your
issue so that others may benefit.


"Jeremy Sage" <Jeremy Sage@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:87BFCA3D-6751-43A1-A4D3-84ADAC3F5300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
We have been having problems with our tape backup, starting with intermittent
failures on our scheduled backup to a point now where nearly all backup
attempts (other than trivial examples) fail.

On failure from a manual backup attempt, a window appears with the message:
"The device reported an error on a request to write data to media. Error
reported: Hardware failure. There may be a hardware or media problem. Please
check the system event log for relevant failures." In the system event log
there are entries: event ID: 9 "The device, \Device\Scsi\symmpi1, did not
respond within the timeout period.". In the backup report, the "device
reported an error..." message is repeated and an additional message saying
"Error: x: is not a valid drive, or you do not have access." (where x: is
either c: or d: depending on which we are backing up).

We have had two replacement tape drive units (i.e. now on the third) brand
new tapes and a new cleaning cartridge. Because of the last error message
referring to access, our hardware support person has said it is a Windows
problem and to "contact Microsoft" (thanks!).

The error message regarding the valid drive and access seems to be a red
herring as I can do a successful back of the same files. I ran a whole series
of tests, the most recent ones were on a set of files in one folder; I
gradually reduced the number of files and eventually got a successful backup;
then when I started increasing the number of files again I got inconsistent
results; e.g. a list of 7 files failed (with the error messages above),
splitting them in to two lots gave successful backups and then another test
with the same original 7 files succeeded. I concluded that it was not a
problem with any specific files but intermittent faults and the larger the
number of files, the more likely the error was to occur.

The machine is running Small Business Server 2003 R2 and I am using
ntbackup. The tape drive is an HP DAT72.

I do not know what I can do to diagnose further and help pin down the problem.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Jeremy

.

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