We are facing a serious problem with our Scalar 100.
Since more than one year we use home-made barcode labels: they worked
perfectly until one week ago.
Then few days ago we had to add 10 new tapes to the library... and half
of them were not even detected by the library: the slots looked empty.

We made a cold reboot of the library with the new tapes loaded.
At startup we had an error message "slot is obstructed", and some of
the new tapes were still not visible.

Perhaps the problem was caused by the barcode... so we tried to enhance
the reflective power of the label with some transparent tape: even
worst, all tapes disappeared!

Then I removed barcode label and I put stupid hand written labels: some
of those tapes were already labelled and contained data, so I needed to
have them online with barcode or not. No way!! They were still not
visible.

We use Sony and HP LTO2 media on the Scalar 100. We never had problem
with those tapes on other libraries we use (HP MSL 6030 for example).

Thanks for reading so far and thanks in advance if you can provide some
suggestions.

Bye,
Fac

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

There are several potential problems.  Your bar code printer, the
robotic picker mechanism in the library or the bar code reader in the
unit.  I don't know what diagnostic utilities exist for the unit, but
you need to isolate the picker unit somehow and verify that it can
access all tape slots in the system correctly. Its possible that a
diagnostic utility could try all move operations and report on those
that fail.  Without a diagnostic utility, try this: Put tapes that you
know you can read the bar codes and try placing them in the slots that
are problematic. If they cannot then the problem is probably in the
picker mechanism (more likely a physical problem than a software bug,
but you should always check for driver updates).  If you can access the
known tapes then the problem is with the new tape cartridges or their
bar codes.  In that case check your bar code printer. Try several
permutations of tapes in different locations - you might come to the
conclusion that the bar code reader cannot read tapes correctly in
certain slots. Make no assumptions about the operations under the sheet
metal.

One last thing. If you removed the bar codes from tapes that had data
and were used by backup software then you want to make sure you get
exactly the same bar codes stuck back on the exact same tapes.  If you
cannot do that, then you have partially screwed yourself.  One of the
worst things you can do is mislabel or relabel tapes without
correlating those changes with backup software.  Restore logic depends
on having all names mapping correctly to physical media.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]