[Info-vax] A VS DLT rant

[VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <22477b62-a162-49fe-9a78-4ab62609af19 at h7g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, Rich Jordan <jordan at ccs4vms.com> writes:
>I despise VS series DLT drives.
>
>A couple years ago we purchased two new in box but old stock VS80s to
>upgrade both VMScluster and wintel backup (from DAT).  All new tapes
>(since the pile of DLT8000 tapes we had would require degaussing to
>work on these drives).
>
>One drive worked fine until now (unfortunately the one on the PC
>side); the other drive self destructed after about 1 month of
>operation (outside of the seller warranty, and since this was old
>stock there was no HP warranty).  So we limped along with DAT backups
>on the VMS side (which never failed).
>
>Recently got a good (?) deal on a brand new rackmount unit with two
>Quantum VS80 drives installed.  Same deal, 2 week seller warranty, no
>Quantum warranty.  Since we still had a buttload of new tapes for this
>format, and it sold for not much more than new cleaning tapes
>(included) go for and we needed a cleaning tape anyway,  we bought
>it.  Figure we'd start new with both drives, one PC, one cluster so
>the working HP drive was pulled.  All old tapes were retired and we
>started with fresh new ones.
>
>31 days later, the drive on the PC side self destructed.  Ate a tape
>(that had only been used twice before in the rotation, without
>errors), broke and sucked the leader.  Same exact symptoms that the
>first failed HP had.
>
>Wondering if this is a design issue or if its simply the "Outsourced
>production 50% failure rate in the first couple of months" QC/
>Manufacturing issue.
>
>So the HP drive goes back into the shiny new rackmount enclosure and
>we hope it keeps working.  Hopefully next time we 'upgrade' backup we
>can go to real DLT-type drives and not the 'value line'.  My DLT8000
>at home (bought used, and using up all those used DLT4 tapes mentioned
>above) is still going strong with no issues.
>
>I hate VS tape drives.

Perhaps the VS stands for "very shoddy?"
-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

All your spirit rack abuses, come to haunt you back by day.
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