Hello,

I just ran a full inventory against my tape library and now all 150 tapes are showing as unrecognized. The status shows available and the barcode is correct but I cannot get these tapes to identify. I waited 24 hours for the inventory to complete, rebooted the DPM server, rescanned/refreshed/identified. I checked the SQL database any everything looks normal. Disk backups are working fine. Firestreamer MMC does not show any failures. What am I missing? Any help would be greatly appreciated before I open a ticket with MS.

Errors from event logs.

The back up to tape job failed for the following reason: (ID: 3311)
Failed to perform the operation since the tape free tape is not available in Tape Library Firestreamer Media Changer (ID: 24050)

Windows Server 2012 R2

DPM 2012 R2 on Rollup 3

SQL 2008 R2

Cristalink Firestreamer Tape Drive

• Moved by Mike JacquetMicrosoft employee, Moderator Tuesday, January 20, 2015 9:17 PM

Hi,

Please remove all the media from firestreamer, then do a fast inventory so DPM shows there are no tapes. Now add back only a single tape media in firestreamer and again do a fast inventory so DPM sees that singlee tape.  Does that take show properly now ?  If not do an identify unknown tape and see what happens.

 

I unlocked the library, unmounted all virtual tapes, locked, did a rescan/quick inventory and witnessed all show as empty. I then unlocked, mounted tapes, locked and a did a full inventory and nothing. Even went as far as restarting the server. I just don't understand as there were no major changes prior to running a full inventory. 

Microsoft support determined the tapes headers became corrupt making the tapes unreadable by Data Protection Manager. After days of troubleshooting, Microsoft determined the cause was most likely related to how the protection groups were created using special characters in the name such as and |

Data was still on the drives and you could view it by mounting but DPM could not read the tapes. I ended up having to rename the protection groups, recreate the virtual tapes and kick backups off again. If special characters are not recommended in the protection groups then Microsoft needs to not allow these when the groups are created!

• Marked as answer by Dave Smero Thursday, January 29, 2015 2:31 PM
• Edited by Dave Smero Thursday, January 29, 2015 2:32 PM

Hi,

Ah yes, I do recall that being an issue and this is covered in the below blog.  Sorry I didn't catch that symptom in your post.

DPM 2007: Tapes are labeled as Unrecognized after just previously writing to them and removing them from the library