Restore from Backup May Not Work Correctly on HP Travan Tape Drives

When you use Windows 2000 Backup (NTBackup.exe) to catalog or restore from a backup tape that you created by using a Hewlett-Packard Travan tape drive, you may encounter one of the following symptoms:

Symptom 1

You receive the following error message and then Backup stops responding (hangs): Your only option in this dialog box is to click Abort.

Note: If you look in the Removable Storage Manager (RSM) Work Queue during this condition, you see a mount, dismount, and eject operation by the Backup program. Each of these operations seem to have completed in a very short time.

Symptom 2

You receive the following error message: Your only option in this dialog box is to click Cancel.

This problem may occur when you use any of the following HP Travan tape drives, which you can view in Removable Storage Manager:

• HP COLORADO 5GB
• HP COLORADO 8GB
• HP COLORADO 14GB
• HP COLORADO 20GB

This behavior occurs because even though Backup completes successfully, the tape drive does not finish flushing data to the tape prior to the removal of the tape cartridge, which results in invalid or missing Beginning Of Tape (BOT) data.

To work around this behavior, use one of the following methods to ensure that data is properly flushed:

• When you use Backup in Windows 2000, use the advanced option verify after backup, or if you are scripting by using a batch file, add the /v:yes switch.
• After the backup is complete, start Removable Storage Manager (RSM) and use the Eject Wizard to perform an eject or use the Rsm.exe command-line utility in a batch file to perform the eject after Backup completes.
  Note: These Travan Drives do not have a hardware Eject button, or a software-driven eject mechanism; you must still manually pull the tape cartridge out the drive when you use the Eject Wizard.

The third-party products that are discussed in this article are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.