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One of our tape drives is going a bit senile. We are trying to nurse it through until the summer when we have plans to completely overhaul how we do backups. Currently the drive is sitting there, all diagnostics say the tape drive is fine but everything says there is no tape in the drive, this means I can't eject it. Tried a fair few reboots, resetting the drive, unplugging the scsi cable and power but to no avail.
Any ideas?
On the server, if you navigate to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Removable Storage > Media
Does your tape appear anywhere in here?
Plenty of Off Line media but nothing reported as being in. We have the tape utility installed and if I set a write test to go it fails with a message about needing a tape. All very bizzare
On the front of the tape drive you should see a pin hole - exactly as you do on CD/DVD drives. If you push a paper clip in, this will reboot the power to the tape drive without having to reboot the whole server. You may be able to eject the tape this way.
I'll try that again, but have done that, plus pulled the power and the scsi cable out of the back (which has worked before when teh pin hole hasn't!). I have a feeling it is a lost cause but thanks for all teh hints so far :D
Nope, reset via the pin hole and left for a rest and still nothing!
As an update, it looks like it is a SCSI problem somewhere as once I got the drive out of the server and hooked up on the bench all was hunky dory (well within the limits a tape drive can be on its own on a bench), even back in the server with only the power plugged in it ejects tapes fine. Put the SCSI cable in and it does nothing. So Monday going to gut another server and see if that drive works, narrow it down to drive or scsi card/cable.
2nd update, just as I was leaving I decided to have a laugh and press the eject button again. Lo and behold out came the tape and after swapping the tape and coming in this morning all works! So for now, it is all ok.