It's probably too late to help my now foundering career :) but for purely
academic reasons I ask the following, curious as to what I did wrong.

Over July 4th, we upgraded out 967 to a 987, and added several new 4 gig
drives.  This went remarkably well.  On Sunday, though, I noticed two weekend
jobs had died with sector errors on LDEV 15 (a new drive).  This seemed like a
bad thing.  A call to the RC confirmed it, and someone was dispatched from the
local HP office with a new drive.

Here's where I tried to get creative.  Since we had not run a successful backup
since the reload (more on that below), I faced the prospect of reloading to
Friday's full, and rerunning all Saturday's production (and telling users they
had lost their work).  Then I thought of that great utility MPEX.

Since so many jobs ran and only two errored, I felt very few files on LDEV 15
might actually be hosed.  So I did a LISTF @[log in to unmask]@ (ONDEVICE(15)), which gave me
a 115 page listing.  I then used MPEX to ALTFILE @[log in to unmask]@ (ONDEVICE(15));LDEV=16
to move the files off.  I expected only the damaged files would fail, and that
appeared to be the case.  And I was pleased to see that almost all the damaged
files were non-production, or static production that had not changed.

I seemed to be hitting it lucky!  I did another LISTF @[log in to unmask]@ (ONDEVICE(15))
after the ALTFILE ended, and it only showed those files that had errored...a
few pages!  So, HP pulled the bad drive, put in the new.  We added it with
VOLUTIL and brought the system back up.

Guess what.  Nothing was working.  We were getting errors on files that were
not even listed as being on LDEV 15.  The error was VOLUME SET NOT MOUNTED
MOUNT PROBLEM FSERR 113 on files like HPPXUDC.PUB.SYS.  We called the response
center, who claimed parts of the file were still on LDEV 15.  When we mentioned
using MPEX the (now rude) RC person said 'In that case this call is over' (does
HP not like MPEX??).  MPEX never listed any extent of HPPXUDC on LDEV 15.

Soooo...any ideas why this did not work?  Could it have worked.  We ended up
with the reload and rerun of production.

Some side notes about the upgrade.  Both Unison and NDS (Roadrunner and JobPak,
respectively) assured us that we did not need any special secret decoder word
to use their products on the new platform.  Both lied, causing us extra grief.
and explaining why we didn't get a full backup Saturday night.  If you plan an
upgrade, beat up your contact at these companies until they give you to word!

Thanks for any help.

Steve
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