THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700


April 3, 2000

02 05 02 61 01040301



Technical Support
Exabyte Corporation
1685 38th Street
Boulder, CO 80301

Subject:   Problem Report
Mammoth LT SCSI SE NARR 5.25 HH 14/28 GB 8MM
2/4MB/S Cabl/Cart/CLN INT
SN: 60155249
Standby Stuck aftar Backup C13
Tapes Reported Defective


On August 11, 2000 we received from Exabyte a new Mammoth LT tape drive, and later on August 16, received 10 tapes, from Exabyte, and on September 29, 2000, we received another 10 tapes, making a total of 21, including the tape that came with the tape drive.

Today, we had two problems.

  1. Backup failed due to a defective tape (#03) or some other cause, on our computer c13.

  2. C13 failed to return from standby after failure of backup, issue #1.

We eventually got the tape drive to successfully complete a backup using tape #03, however, we have questions about reliability, since previously on February 11, 2001 tape #21, also, purchased from Exabyte, failed.

Background on purchase of tape drive and tapes is in the record for today.

Typically, when a backup runs successfully, our computer, c13 - Pentium 4, 400 MHz bus, 256 MB memory, 46 GB drive, running Windows 2000) returns from standby mode without incident. Does Exabyte have experience of the Mammoth LT tape drive causing w2k not to return from standby when a back up fails?

How can reliability of new tapes purchased from Exabyte be determined? We have a lot of backups now that we are counting on to recover information when needed? There does not seem to be a format procedure to repair a defective tape. Is there a way to recover a defective tape, without replacing the tape, which takes time and expense for us and for Exabyte?

Right now we have at least one defective tape, #21, and one suspect tape, #03.

Can you comment from the record of our work, i.e., whether there is a procedure we are doing that is causing problems, or that we are failing to perform that is needed for effective use of Exabyte products?

Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY



Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net