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Unable To Access SCSI Tape Drives

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nick

I am trying to utilize linux's dd command to create 1:1 disk images of some archival tapes I have.

My setup:

I am running a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS. I have an Exabyte VXA-2 drive (external, SCSI) for some 80GB VXA-2 tapes I have, and an HP T4000s drive (internal, SCSI) for some 4GB Travan tapes. I have an Adaptec AHA 2940 UW SCSI adapter as well as an Adaptec AHA 2920 SCSI adapter. My box is a Dell Precision workstation (I needed a motherboard old enough to have the PCI slots I need for the SCSI adapters).

My issue:

All operations I try to perform on either drive fail in input/output errors. With the VXA-2 drive, the terminal will pause for response from the drive for a minute or two before failing. With the Travan drive, it instantly fails the moment I send the command.

Linux correctly sees and identifies the drives:

me@mybox:~$ lsscsi

[0:0:11:0] tape EXABYTE VXA-2 100E /dev/st1

[1:0:0:0] disk ATA ST500NM0011 SN02 /dev/sda

[3:0:0:0] cd/dvd hp DVD A DH16AFSH DHH6 /dev/sr0

[7:0:5:0] tape HP T4000s 1.05 /dev/st0

Attempting a dd:

me@mybox:~$ sudo dd if=/dev/st0 of=/Desktop/test.img

dd: failed to open '/dev/st0': Input/output error

Attempting any command with mt:

me@mybox:~$ sudo mt -f /dev/st0 status

mt: /dev/st0: rmtopen failed: Input/output error

I'm using brand new tapes for these tests. The drives are used but in good condition and recently cleaned. They're hooked up to different SCSI adapters, so I don't think the adapter is the issue either. And in truth, I have 4 different Travan drives, all of which produce the same instantaneous input/output error. The only other obvious hardware fault therefore would probably be the motherboard itself, so I'm hoping I'm just doing something wrong.

Any tips? I'm new to linux so maybe I'm just missing something obvious. Should I expect mt and dd to just work out of the box for these tapes, or do I really need to source linux drivers for these ancient scsi tape drives first?

Thanks for your help.

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ch flag
Serg
Did you try to use `dmesg` for possible details regarding this error?
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nick avatar
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nick
That's a good idea, thanks. The trouble I'm having is that some of the USB connections on this motherboard appear to be faulty, so my dmesg is filled with spam regarding this issue. I think if there was an issue to report, it's probably being pushed out by the usb spam. Perhaps I simply need to try on a different machine...
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ch flag
Serg
Try to filter `dmesg` output using `grep`. But you are right to run more clear experiment. Good luck.
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