ABR 11 Advanced Workstation does not detect SCSI tape drive
On my new PC (Windows 7 64bit Professional) I installed the test version of ABR 11 Advanced Workstation (Build 11.0.17217). I want to use it for backups on my Tandberg LTO-3 HH SCSI tape drive. When I open ABR 11, however, it does not detect the tape drive. When I ask ABR 11 to scan the machine for tape drives, I get the answer "Keine Bandgeraete angeschlossen" (German for "no tape drives connected"). I found no way to use the tape drive in ABR 11.
I checked that the tape drive is included in the device list provided by the OS ("Systemsteuerung/Geraetemanager"). Also, the Tandberg test tool "TDToolWin" finds the LTO-3 tape drive on the SCSI connection and successfully performs the tape drive test sequence. I checked if the test version of the ABR software is limited in terms of tape drive support, but could not find any hint at that. Also, ABR 11 does perform the device scan for tape drives, as I see on the list "Aktuelle Aktivitäten" (German for "current activity list"). It just does not find the connected tape drive.
What else can I do? Any help would be much appreciated.
Best regards,
Rolf
Hello Hendrik,
Thank you very much for your advice. Yes, I had read everything about tape drives written in the user gude. The problem is that I do not know what to do with the Removable Storage Service. I will try to find out how I can see if this service is active, and how to de-activate it. If you could help me with some info, this would of course be even better. I've never heard about this service before.
Best regards,
Rolf
PS: I continue our conversation in English because I have the impression that this problem may affect other inexperienced users as well.
Hello Rolf,
Go to services.msc and look for the Service and look for Removal Storage (on a German OS search for Wechselmediendienst).
Best regards
Hendrik Bode
Hello Hendrik,
Thanks for your reply! This evening I will try out what you suggested to do. In the meantime I googled a little about RSM. I found that in Windows 7 the RSM is no longer supported. Since my new PC is running Windows 7 Professional (64bit), I wonder how the RSM could be found on my system at all.
I will see!
Best Regards,
Rolf
Hello Hendrik,
As I already expected, the fix you suggested did not work. As can be seen in many discussions on the Internet, Windows 7 does not provide a Removable Storage Manager any more. In fact, that created the current problem many users have with tape backup devices when they move to Windows 7.
I checked all running services on my system. As I said, there is no RSM service provided by Windows. Interestingly, however, I found a service called "Acronis Removable Storage Management Service". It seems as if Acronis tried to replace the Windows service with some own software. This service was started and activated. De-activating it did not change the problem: The tape device scan completed without error, but it still did not find the LTO-3 tape drive. Stopping the service made things only worse: In this case the device scan in ABR 11 completed with an error.
So, this obviously does not lead anywhere. Does anybody out there have an idea if / how ABR 11 works with LTO-3 tape drives under Windows 7? After hours of reading the Internet I now know that this must be a well-known problem. I'm very frustrated that the Acronis documentation does not provide more guidance in this matter.
Best Regards,
Rolf
Hello Rolf and Hendrik,
Thank you for posting and thank you very much for your generous help Hendrik,
Rolf, we can definitely resolve this issue. Please contact our Support team directly for additional investigation and I am certain we will get to the bottom of this problem.
If you have additional questions please let me know.
Thank you.
Hello Anton,
Thank you very much for your encouraging words! It would be great if I could get ABR 11 to run on my system.
I coudn't access the forum page for more than two days, so I found your reply only yesterday evening. I will study the web link you provided and contact the support team directly.
Many thanks also to Hendrik for his attempt to solve my problem!
Best regards,
Rolf
First off I would ensure that the tape drive is being detected by Windows 7 (device manager), you can also check that the device drivers for your tape drive are installed (again located in device manager)... If you don’t see your tape drive check that the SCSI card you are using has been detected and that you are running the latest device drivers for the HBA then you should find your SCSI tape drive...
Also ensure your SCSI device is terminated and that you have no bent pins on your SCSI cable/terminator. Once all that is done, reboot your PC and try ABR11 again (Also ensure you are running the advanced edition of ABR11 as this is the version that has support for tape drives!
Thanks for your advice!
The Tandberg tape drive is detected by Windows 7 and listed by the device manager. The same for the SCSI card which was installed recently ago with the latest device drivers. The external Tandberg LTO-3 tape drive does the bus termination itself (according to the manual), so I didn't have to do anything there myself.
I ran the Tandberg tool "TDTool" successfully from my Windows 7 environment. It writes 2 GBytes of data to the tape, reads it back in, compares the results and measures the write/read performance. Everything looks perfect there. From this test I conclude that nothing can be wrong with the SCSI HBA, the cable to the LTO-3 drive and the drive itself. Since the tape drive is listed by the Windows 7 device manager, I wonder why it is not found by ABR 11.
Best Regards,
Rolf
Hi Rolf
Sounds like all should be working well from the tape side of things then.
This might be a silly question but when you load ABR11 consol and select the “Tape Management” icon/section does ABR11 report: (No tape drive found.... Detect Tape Devices)? If you click on “Detecte tape devices” link a few times then refresh the page (selecting another screen then loading it again (just to be sure) is there still no tape drives found?
I have noticed on some systems if the tape drive has not finished initializing before the OS is booting/started the device can sometimes appear in device manager but not be accessible at times, you might be able to fix this by restarting the Acronis services, alternatively try rebooting your system (But do not reset the tape drive). If your drive is internal try and PAUSE on the BIOS screen until you see your tape drive settle down and finish initializing then continue (you should then see the SCSI card BIOS screen load normally. ensure the drive is detected and synced at the correct speed (Eg, Ultra 160, 16Bit bus..etc). Then continue to load Windows and see if ABR11 then detects the tape drive... Would be interested to hear your results and what you find, if it does to do with timing and the tape drive not initializing fast enough you can normally put a delay in your BIOS to allow for this (normally can be set for HDD’s to ensure they have enough time to spin up..etc)
Hi Data,
Yes, when I select the “Tape Management” icon/section, ABR11 reports: No tape drive found.... Detect Tape Devices. I then clicked on "Detect Tape Devices" several times, without any change. I then clicked on the button on the bottom of the page to see the latest activities. All the tape device detection runs were reported there, and they all had terminated successfully (still not showing any tape drive). When I clicked back on the Tape Management page, there still were no tape drives listed. I have done all this both from the management console and from the local agent GUI. No difference!
I do not believe the problem could be related to a late startup of the tape drive. First of all, I use to start the tape drive very early before I start up the PC. Actually, I start the PC only after the status light of the tape drive says that the startup procedure is completed. On the PC, the SCSI BIOS reports that it finds the Tandberg LTO-3 HH tape drive. So, everything is perfect at this point. Later, in Windows 7 the device manager shows the Tandberg as well. And remember: The program TDTool provided by Tandberg interacts with the tape drive perfectly under Windows 7. So, I have the impression that putting some delay into the BIOS would not help. What do you think?
Best Regards,
Rolf
When I check my logs I get a “Completed” when I do a scan, if you are getting a “Terminated” progress I would suggest double clicking on that item and then selecting the “Log” view to see if it helps show any reasons/errors to work with?
Another suggestion I can make is to ensure the “Acronis Removable Storage Management Service” is currently “Running”.
Also as your tape drive is stable and being detected by your SCSI card 100% on boot up, there should be no need for any delays in BIOS or changes. All sounds to be working well from that side.
Since I use the German version of "ABR 11 Advanced Workstation", I cannot tell whether the message at the end of the tape device scan is "completed" or "terminated" in English. I guess we are talking about the same message.
Thanks for the suggestion to look into the log view. I will check it for any additional information.
The "Acronis Removable Storage Management Service" is up and running. I checked that several times already.
Meanwhile I sent screen shots and other info to the Acronis support. I'm waiting for their analysis of the problem.
Best Regards,
Rolf