If it's not a compressed tape, you could have an alignment problem.

Several years ago, a customer had a disk drive failure that required
replacement and subsequent re-intsall from backup.

After disk replacement by HP, previous night's backup (with SLT included)
was mounted on DDS1 drive. AVR error showed on console. It was obvious this
tape could not be read - even by the same drive that had created it only 18
hours or so earlier.

Reverting to an earlier backup was not an option.

Long story short - tape drive was replaced with DDS3 drive. Install started
and completed without a hitch.

I have seen similar situation a couple of other occasions.

One can conclude that DDS3 is much more reliable - and less sensitive to
mis-alignment - than either DDS1 or DDS2 - although, I have seen problems
with DDS3 as well - though much less frquently.

If the data on this DDS tape is really critical, you may want acquire use
of DDS3 drive.

Presumeably, already announced and son-to-be-available DDS4 will be even
more reliable.

Let's hope so.


At 04:09 PM 1999-09-30 -0400, Tom Hula wrote:
>When trying to load a 1994 DDS tape, I got the following:
>
>LDEV 7 I/O error ignored during AVR. I/O status %74
>Vol (unlabeled) mounted on LDEV# 7
>
>When I tried to restore from the tape, the error returned
>said there was no store label.
>
>Tried cleaning the drive and nothing changed.
>
>Is this tape really done or are there other options?
>        Tom Hula
>        Victor S. Barnes Company
>
>
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Gilles Schipper
GSA Inc.
HP3000 & HP9000 System Administration Specialists
300 John Street, Box 87651   Thornhill, ON Canada L3T 7R4
Voice: 905.889.3000     Fax: 905.889.3001
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