Just wondering what your policy on DAT and DLT drives is?

Im a hardware tech for a small IT services co, and Id say 90-95% of my callouts to customer sites are for DAT and DLT problems, and I tend to get a little pi$$ed off with them!

Various problems ranging from dropped leaders, always asking for cleaning tapes, media errors etc etc...
And the problems are so hard to diagnose, it takes up most of my time.
Our contracts mean that we have to either fix the problem or provide a replacement. But theres that many of them that go wrong its hard to keep up...
Not so bad when the server is under warranty etc, but its just crazy the amount of trouble our customers seem to have.

Is it the same elsewhere?

Cheers
Mark...

 

I manage a small network (around 50 users) with 5 Windows NT/2000 servers and recently had a spate of DAT drive failures.

I wonder if it is heavy handed replacement of the tapes?

Roger

 

DAT drives are probably the least reliable component in the servers I look after. Thankfully most of the recent failures have been in Compaq servers so we don't have to send an engineer.

Not a big fan of them myself, but it's usually a waste of time to get a customer to buy expensive DLT media, so DAT it is.

At least it's not Travan technology though...

 

Thanks for the replies.

ChrisB, Im interested in your comment about them being Compaq Servers so you dont have to send an engineer out.

Could you explain a little further?
Do you work for a maintenance co, or are these your own companies servers?

My company is an official warranty centre for Compaq/HP, and Im a qualified Compaq/HP engineer, so I still have to deal with failed DATs/DLTs under warranty!

 

We made the move over to DLT 2yrs ago, and in that time the ONLY issue was one day the backup failed because the drive needed cleaning. Cleaning cartridge in, problem sorted... The cartridges are damn expensive though!

Andy

 

Hehe, thanks Andy,

Think yourself lucky you've not got SDLT drives...

Tapes for those are around £60-70 a pop!!

 

I had to buy some DDS4 DAT tapes the other day for another site (DLT drives here) guess how much the tapes were?????????????

£2 inc VAT!! 2 bloody squid, Bargin

Darren

 

Two spots for DDS4? That's well cheap - where did you get them from?

Mark, I work for a reseller and we do Compaq servers (along with OEM etc). Once we're sure it's the DDS drive that's up the swanny, we call hp/Compaq and I guess they send somebody like you to swap the drive.

 

Chris,

It was from Computer 2000. Granted normally they would not be that cheap but even with 10% + VAT they are still only peanuts

Darren