"Scott R. Burn" wrote:
> 
> I have a DDS-2 DAT tape created on a Solaris V2.6.x box using a Sun DAT =
> drive using Sun's tar. I am using:
> 
> HP 24x6 drive using Tar under V1.3.3/i386

...

> 5) The drive is used for our backups every night without issue, those =
> tapes are readable.

Direct after writing it or after usige the drive some time between
for other tapes?

Have you an other drive, where you can try to read the tape back and
did it fail there also?

Can you read tape from the HP drive on the Sun drive?

I ask this, because we have had a similar problem, which result in
replacing the problematic drive.

Here is a short decription of what happens:
1. Write a tape on drive A.
2. Reading on drive B failed, whith media error. Cleaningtapes don't help.
   Write an other testtape on B.
3. Readtest on drive C also faild simmilar symtoms for the A tape, but the
   B tape works perfectly. Write an other testtape on C.
4  Read C tape on drive B works.
5. Drive A could not read any tape back, but reads the last tape written
   on it perfectly.

Hope this helps
Bernd Salbrechter

PS. Dose someone know a way to get the tapes back in a useable state
(not the data), because we can't even erase the tapes written on drive A.