Recover EOL Tape

[zak1976]

Hi,
We are useing Veeam Backup&Replication with a Tape Library from Dell.
we use LTO8 Media from Dell and I get warnings that that the tapes are EOL.
The tapes are ok, they are used for less than 120 times for backups (not fully written), so i think the tapes are still ok.
I get the warning : 20.06.2021 03:40:27 :: TapeDrive alert: The tape cartridge is nearing the end of its calculated life. It is recommended that you:. Use another tape cartridge for your next backup. Store this tape in a safe place in case you need to restore data from it.
In this case, the Medium is a montly Backup Medium, stored for 12 month and never been overwritten so far, so this media seems to be still good in my opinion.
How can I use this medium for further Backups?
This is what i have tried:
In Veeam i removed that media from catalog, that worked, but when I insert this media in the libary it is recognized/moved to the "retired media pool".
I thing that the tape drive discover the tape to be retired/EOL but how can I "overwrite" this? Maybe reset the drive?
Tape library is a Dell PV 1000 autoloader / Lto8 with latest Firmware, Backup Software is Veeam 11, latest patchlevel.

[soncscy]

Tape drives send their own tape alert codes and this is what Veeam responds to as far as I know. Once the drive has flagged a tape as "time to retire", a backup application should honor it.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/ts3500-tape ... ape-drives

HPE has a similar list but I can't find it quickly; even if you did flag something on the Veeam side, as soon as the drive reads the tape, it's going to send the same alert and you'll be back in the same spot likely.

So you'll need to check with your tape vendor if there's a way to suppress this, but I think it's best to follow the warning here -- 120 uses is a pretty normal amount before retirement if you weren't doing reel to reel writes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Ta ... durability

So, I strongly advise you don't try to continue with these tapes -- the drive is being very honest, and you might be putting your tapes at risk!

[Dima P.]

Harvey is right, Veeam B&R relies on the warnings or errors received by the hardware and does not tack the EOL on it's own. You can clean the tape drive and run native tape utility to check the tape media lifespan, sometimes these errors are caused by the tape drive when it's not cleaned periodically. Thanks!