Question
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Topic
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HP Ultrium 1760 SAS tape (LTO4): LEDS sequence not mentioned in manual
Hello!
Two days ago I bought a refirbished backup SAS tape, HP Ultrium 1760.
The seller stated that the tape passed with flying colors the tests.
I connected it to my SAS RAID controller, Adaptec ICP5165BR which has 4 ports
connectors. Port 0 has a 1-to-4 SAS cable connected to it through which my 4 HDDs
are controlled (as two RAID 0 arrays). Port 1 until recently had its channels 1,2 used for two more
HDDs, currently they’re disconnected (waiting for another two disks). I decided to connect
the tape drive to channel 4 of the “port 1” SAS 1-to-4 cable.
The power to the tape had been connected to a separate, old type molex connector
of the tape, according to a warning in the manual not to use the SAS cable power connector
or it will damage the tape drive.
During the first boot after installing the tape drive its LEDs switched between 2 states:1) All 4 LEDS are “ON” (a state not mentioned in the manual of that tape drive).
2) Blinking “ready” LED with 3 other LEDs are OFF.I powered down the PC, waited 2 minutes and rebooted.
This time I had one time that the tape has settled on a normal idle state (only “ready” LED is ON),
I’ve run “dmesg > somefile” (I’m running Fedora 29) and saw that the tape drive had been detected OK.
Also, the /dev/st0 device had been created together with its “derivative” devices.
Since the data/cleaning cartridges are still on their way I can’t insert a cartridge into the tape drive.
It turned out that was the only time the tape had been detected OK.
All following reboots I’m getting the tape either swittching between the two states mentioned above
(with time of being in the “all 4 LEDS are ON” varies greatly, sometimes it’s just a few seconds,
sometimes it’s minutes). The randomless of the LEDs behavior led me to think I might have
some bad contact of the molex power connector. I powered down the PC, opened it again
and connected another branch of the molex power connector to the tape drive, also made sure it sits firmly
“all the way in”.
Since that, during reboots the tape LEDs switch between the 2 states mentioned above and when the PC
completes the boot the LEDs settle on the state “all 4 LEDS are ON”, which, as I already mentioned,
isn’t listed among the various LEDs sequences in the manual.Any idea what this LEDs combination means?
TIA!
