Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 11:41:17 -0700
Mr. Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net
The Welch Company
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111 2496
| Subject: | Novaback Improvements |
Rod,
Here are some more suggestions to help you with this issue: Ensure your SCSI bus termination is set properly. Only the devices at the end of a cable should have termination enabled. If you have internal and external devices, then the card is NOT to be terminated. Check with your SCSI host adapter manual for more information on termination configuration.
Make sure your SCSI host adapter is setup properly. This is often easy for PCI/EISA/MCA adapters, but could be a challenge for ISA adapters. Overall, just make sure your SCSI host adapter is not using any IRQs, DMAs, or IO port addresses that any other hardware device is using. If in doubt, consult the manuals or contact the SCSI host adapter manufacturer.
Use the most current drivers available for your SCSI host adapter. Manufacturers update their device drivers on a regular basis to solve various problems (it always happens). The more current your drivers are, the more likely your system will work smoothly.
Please check the SCSI ID of the tape drive. The recommended SCSI ID for tape devices is 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. Using SCSI ID 7 will cause a conflict with the SCSI controller and SCSI IDs 0 and 1 are best reserved for SCSI hard drives. Be sure that no other SCSI device on the SCSI chain is using the same SCSI ID. Multiple devices using the same SCSI ID will cause conflicts on the SCSI controller, not allowing the devices to operate properly.
If configurable, please disable the Synchronous Negotiation option for the entire SCSI host adapter or the particular device. Many modern SCSI host adapters have this configurable through the BIOS or via a jumper/switch setting. Also, if possible, set the bus transfer rate to the smallest allowable, working your way back up until the tape drive functions as expected. Many SCSI host adapters can be set to data transfer rates higher than most drives can accurately handle.
Initiate Sync. Negotiation - No Initiate Wide Negotiation - YES Maximum Transfer-rate - 20 Mbytes/sec Enable Disconnection - Yes Send start unit command - No Also go into the Device Manager and see who the Provider of the SCSI card driver. If the provider is not Adaptec, you must go to Adaptec's web site and update this driver.
What do you want to upgrade? You already do have the latest version of the NovaBackup 6.6 software.
Sincerely,
NovaStor Corporation
Bill
NovaStor Technical Support Team support@novastor.com (805) 579-6700 ext. 200 Internet: Internet: http://www.novastor.com
Post Script
Elias AbuGhazaleh
support@novastor.com
NovaStor Corporation
Technical Support Team
80-B W Cochran St, Simi Valley, CA 93065
(805) 579-6700 ext. 200
| Subject: | Novaback Improvements |
Hi,
We have tried asking for help in the past, and just get TQM form letters, but here is another try, because with the recession and being at war, it is critical to improve productivity, earnings and stock prices, which can be accomplished by improving the work.
Novaback is crashing consistently, as in every time we use it, during the verify operation. The most recent failure occurred today.
Novaback is configured with the Windows 2000 operating system on our IBM-type computer with Intel 1.4 GHz processor, 400 MHz bus, 512M memory, 46 G hard drive. We are running Novaback on an Exabyte Mammoth LT tape drive. Backup is about 106K files, 6.2 G and takes about 30 minutes for both operations. Backup seems to run, but verify fails when about 75% - 80% complete.
We notified Novastor of this problem, and received on June 8, 2001 ideas from Novastor in a your letter dated June 6, 2001.
We have been turning off all power saver options, as you folks suggested in your letter on June 6, 2001. but this has not solved the problem, so this means the cause is different from your initial analysis, and more work is needed to make Novastor run correctly on our configuration.
We have upgraded w2k with service pack 2, and today we tried to update Novaback, on the chance this could clear our problem, but could not figure out how to upgrade Novaback on your website....
Thanks.
Sincerely,
The Welch Company
Rod
Rod Welch rowelch@attglobal.net 415 781 5700