The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/LaundryMan2008 on 2025-04-13 19:12:01.
To begin, I’m posting this a day early before I get home from Spain holiday so I can get plenty of replies with advice so that I can immediately start trying to resolve my roadblock with reprogramming those tape drives so it might be a few hours before I can actually start putting your help to good use and so I can start relying on what worked and what didn’t, those replies will come later unless I have already tried this or to ask a question about it.
I have all of the Linux commands ready to go to transmit the HEX data which is shown in a picture and transcribed below (I used a different command found on the internet as I didn’t want to go to the length of learning how to make that file and for the convenience when I release my megapost that includes a MUCH more detailed and easy to follow instructions to reprogram your drive as the GitHub post is just terrible and required the help of many people to understand it and to get to this point), when I execute the command, the light on the CP2102 USB UART bridge lights up to say that data is being transmitted but the tape drive isn’t receiving it as the sled isn’t powering the tape drive or sending any data, I thought that I could power the tape drive externally with a SAS cable connected to the PC but it still didn’t reprogram and reboot and still showed the error code “E” which means it’s outside of the library and can’t communicate with it.
I also had the LTO-4 sled die on me, the fan stopped spinning so I had to wire up the other SAS sled that I had which was a LTO-5 sled which was a little annoying but I thought maybe the other sled was on it’s way out and refused to power the tape drive but the new sled still did the same and firing the reprogram command still didn’t work, I also noticed the sled had a light on the back to indicate that it’s powered on but it’s not lit up when I plug the MOLEX cable in.
Are there any extra connections (like a connection that shorts 2 contacts together or grounds a pin to let the sled know it’s inserted into a library successfully) that I need to make to be able to have the sled from the tape library power the tape drive or is there a jumper somewhere on the circuit board that I need to connect to power the drive up or is it normal for the tape drive to not have anything on the screen and not be moving and that my command is just bad and I need a different one?
It’s a HUGE roadblock to getting these tape drives fixed as I can’t even begin to test or diagnose the drives as they will not show up in windows under the SAS controller card so I’m beginning to think about letting these LTO-5 tape drives go if I can’t reprogram them as I have been bashing my head against a brick wall trying to reprogram them and the stupid sled is refusing to power the tape drive or relay my commands to it.
