LTO4 Help Needed!

[Kevin Wild]

Definitely offtopic from the usual RED stuff, but hoping someone can help me.

For a good while we've used a Quantum 1/2 rack Ultrium 4 LTO4 drive with Retrospect 6. It did it's job. Suddenly, (possibly after updating our Macs to 10.6.4), the Quantum cannot be seen by Retrospect 6 or 8.2 after I downloaded the latest drivers.

I'm not sure if the Mac is even seeing it. It's hooked up via SAS to our XServe. I go under "About this Mac-More info-SAS" and I see under SAS Domain 3 that it says LSILogic, SAS3442E, Firmware 1.23.2.0, PCI, Slot-1, etc. So I assume it's seeing the LSI card I have installed. But not the LTO.

If anyone can help, I'd appreciate it. I called Quantum and they sent a new drive and it won't see that either. Is this a possible driver issue for the card?

In it deep...and over my head.

Thanks!

Kevin

 

[Adam Eden]

I run an atto UL4d card. As this is the most stable card for an LTO drive.

They are worth nothing second hand now so try and get your hands on one. Im running a DLT320 drive on an old Dual 2gig G5.

I wish someone would make a firewire case to run a DLT drive!

I also run an Apple XSERVE. The first one ever made and it still runs my business!! I could never get the dlt drive to work reliably on it.

All the G5 does is run the DLT drive. You could possibly pick up and old G5 with an Atto card for a couple of hundred dollars. Very reliable and very stable. JUST DONT UPGRADE IT!!!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

For some reason the system is not seeing the LTO drive. If it's not reported in system profiler as being connected to the SAS host, there is something wrong with the connection or the drive.

Unfortunately, with the Quantum SAS units, you're pretty much locked into using the supplied LSI SAS controllers. It's a driver and firmware combination thing. The biggest problem is that there are no actual drivers for LTO tape (or any tape drive type) under OSX and software vendors have to supply hardware support in their apps.

If it were a SCSI based LTO, then yeah, go for the ATTO controller! HP SAS LTO drives love ATTO controllers on the Mac and don't work with much else.

Anyway, I would start by checking the cables and whatnot. Also be aware that Retrospect 8 does not read the old Retrospect 6 data!!! Or it did not when it was first released.

Hopefully tape manufacturers will grow a brain and start offering USB3 and eventually LightPeak interfaces for their tape drives. I've given up hope on anyone offering an eSATA interface. There's no reason not to, it's just the product designers for tape systems are too invested in the corporate infrastructure mentality and are not interested in anything that is commonly available on the consumer level. They haven't realized yet that they would probably double their sales by offering a unit that is compatible with both eSATA and SAS hosts instead of limiting it to SAS.

 

[Tom Gough]

...They haven't realized yet that they would probably double their sales by offering a unit that is compatible with both eSATA and SAS hosts instead of limiting it to SAS.

Amen to that! :thumbsup:

All the best,

 

[Kevin Wild]

Jeff-I'm trying my best at tech support, meaning I'm trying to rule out possible places of problem.

Considering, I've replaced the SAS cable AND Quantum replaced the drive and I'm still not seeing it...what do you think is next? If the Mac isn't listing it, I would guess the card but the card IS showing up in the Mac profiler. So...I'm at a loss. I really need to back up some files soon, so let me know if you have any other advice.

Thanks a lot!

Kevin

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Could be a controller issue... Could be a driver issue...

Can you do a fresh installation of OSX to another partition or external drive and boot from that? Start clean and see what happens? Perhaps some driver entry got messed up during the upgrade... Just something to try.

 

[Kevin Wild]

Hmm...since it's acting as our server, I'm reluctant to do that. I do have a couple G5's sitting around so I may just buy a SAS card for one of those and hook it up as Adam mentioned above. Ugh! I wish it was easier, though.

Thanks!

Kevin

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If you can afford 10 to 20 minutes of down-time on the server, that could be all you need to test and see if it's an OS, driver or configuration issue. You can do an OSX install onto another system or external drive and boot the server with that. You don't have to do the install on the server, you can do it on any other Intel Mac. In fact, if you have a Macbook [Pro], you can just connect it to the XServe in target disk mode and boot your XServe from it. Drivers for the LSI card are rolled into OSX, it will see the SAS card and report devices. If it's still not seeing the LTO, then you know you have some sort of communication error that may start with the SAS card itself.

Moving your tape backup to an older G5 system is actually a really good solution. Of course, you'll be stuck running OSX 10.5, but it could be a great solution for the foreseeable future, until you upgrade to something else. If the LSI SAS host in the XServe is only being used for the tape drive, then you may as well pull that card and use it in the G5. That would also be a good way to test.

If you do go and buy a second SAS card. You will need to get the same LSI card, or another LSI SAS HBA that Quantum likes to use. Unfortunately the wonderful SAS cards from ATTO and Areca don't play well with the Quantum LTO units on the Mac...

 

[Kevin Wild]

Thanks, I may try that! I appreciate your help.