X-Serve and a SDLT Stand-Alone Tape Drive

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Courtenay.Jones@gmail.com - 29 Sep 2006 16:41 GMT

We have a Mac X-Serve (Mac OS 10.2.8) that is backed up with a
stand-alone tape drive. The tape drive had gone bad, and we had
replaced it. I had removed the bad tape drive by powering it off, and
removing it while the box is still on.

We have received the replacement drive, and I have attached it to the
X-Serve, and then powered it on while the box was still on. The backup
software we are using (Retrospect 5.) does not recongise the new drive,
and I am not sure how to confirm that the O/S is recongizing it either.
II have performed a soft reboot of the box, but have not done a full
power down/power back on off the box.

My questions are as follows:

1. How do I verify that the O/S is recongizing the tape drive (I have
checked in Apple System Profiler, but that was only a guess on my part,
and I did not see anything in there about a tape drive).

2. Is there a Mac O/S command line equivalent of ioscan, or way to have
the O/S query for the drive w/o performing a hard boot on the system/

I appreciate all of the help - I am a HP-UX Administrator by nature,
and this box kind of fell to to my car.

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Michael Vilain - 29 Sep 2006 21:02 GMT

> We have a Mac X-Serve (Mac OS 10.2.8) that is backed up with a
> stand-alone tape drive. The tape drive had gone bad, and we had
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
> checked in Apple System Profiler, but that was only a guess on my part,
> and I did not see anything in there about a tape drive).

How is the drive connected to the system? I had a SCSI DAT drive I used
with 10.3 which worked just fine with Retrospect. But it had to be
powered ON when the system was booted. If you power it on with the
system running, it won't be recognized. My guess, the OS data
structures aren't created unless the device is present at boot.

> 2. Is there a Mac O/S command line equivalent of ioscan, or way to have
> the O/S query for the drive w/o performing a hard boot on the system/

AFAIK, there is no command line equivalent (unless you wrote one and
didn't tell us). When you run the Apple System Profiler GUI, that's the
closest you'll get to scanning the IO database on the running system.
This isn't unheard of. Solaris doesn't have an "ioscan" either.

> I appreciate all of the help - I am a HP-UX Administrator by nature,
> and this box kind of fell to to my care.

If you decide to move to later versions of the OS (10.4 is the current
version with 10.5 coming next year), be aware that SCSI support is
essentially gone. Although I still have my SCSI DAT drive, I bought a
Firewire VX tape drive when I found that Retrospect crashes 10.4 when
accessing the SCSI tape. VX tape works just fine and it all fits on 1
80GB tape!

MacOS X doesn't come with a generic tape driver (nor have I ever seen
one for it that wasn't part of a vendor's product), so you're stuck
using proprietary programs to do backups. Retrospect writes directly to
the device rather than through a device driver.

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Jolly Roger - 30 Sep 2006 20:58 GMT

> If you decide to move to later versions of the OS (10.4 is the current
> version with 10.5 coming next year), be aware that SCSI support is
> essentially gone. Although I still have my SCSI DAT drive, I bought a
> Firewire VX tape drive when I found that Retrospect crashes 10.4 when
> accessing the SCSI tape. VX tape works just fine and it all fits on 1
> 80GB tape!

A little off-topic here, but: I assume when you mention "VX" you are
talking about Exabyte's VXA tape drives?

After having used a bunch of different tape drives from multiple
vendors over the
past ten or so years, and after having acquired an Exabyte VXA2 Firewire
tape drive this past year, I really can't say enough good about these drives
and the technology Exabyte uses in them. Compared to other tape drive and
tape technologies, these guys are way ahead of the curve. Exabyte's stuff
leaves the others in the dust. Exabyte is creating some very cool and
advanced tape technology. Their packet drive products are simply a joy to
use!

Anyone in the market for tape storage solutions would do well to check
them out:

<http://exabyte.com/technology/vxa/index.cfm>

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Jolly Roger - 29 Sep 2006 21:07 GMT

> We have a Mac X-Serve (Mac OS 10.2.8) that is backed up with a
> stand-alone tape drive. The tape drive had gone bad, and we had
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
> I appreciate all of the help - I am a HP-UX Administrator by nature,
> and this box kind of fell to to my car.

By what type of interface is the drive connected to the Mac (Firewire,
SCSI, etc.)?

If it's a Firewire tape drive, then you'll have to look for it in Apple
System Profiler (ASP) under "Firewire". If it's not showing up there,
try shutting the Mac down completely, turning off the tape drive,
turning the tape drive back on, rebooting the Mac, then checking ASP's
Firewire listing again.

If it's SCSI then I believe it will be under a "SCSI" entry in ASP. If
it's not showing up there, the SCSI ID of the drive may possibly need
to be changed to get the drive to appear on the SCSI bus...

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Mac Forum / General / General / September 2006

X-Serve and a SDLT Stand-Alone Tape Drive