tape drives

This is a notification to other owners of HP SureStore Dat8i drives (or other SureStore DAT models) that utilize the Stac Replica software that shipped with many of these drives: The Stac software could fail to do a Disaster Recovery of a system running Windows NT 4.0 server. The disaster recovery feature may fail while running HP supplied Stac Replica software which HP previously had indicated would be able to perform disaster recovery on NT 4.0 Servers having compatible hardware. Note that starting a disaster recovery session then opting to exit before it actually restores to a hard drive will not prove the disaster recovery will work.

For anyone interested my issue detailed:

I purchased a new SureStore DAT8i drive in 01/2000 for purposes of backing up a NT 4.0 server. The DAT drive when it arrived did not function with the server I had then. The user manual stated (page 3 item 2)in its OBDR-compatibility checklist that computers bought before May 1, 1999 may not be compatible. Because the server I had was not compatible (no apparent reason other than it was purchased more than 6 months prior) I purchased two new HP NetServer E60 servers. One E-60 server was to replace my existing server the other I set aside as a backup machine in the event some hardware (other than the hard drive) failed. I tested the DR feature by creating a DR backup tape then initiating a DR session. I was able to get to the point where it allowed me to exit out of a DR without performing a restore and this led me to believe that it was working. It would not perform this test with my previous server. ( Note there was one issue with the Stac Replica Software then, which I had to research myself and which I feel HP should have notified me ).

In the interim between when I purchased the drive and this last week I've made approx. 10 DR backups of my server. My server is mission critical and I had a number of important configurations of the server I wished to have the ability to restore from. To illustrate, my configurations contained multitudes of ftp and web servers configured in IIS and custom cgi scripts that were dependent on the particular config. of the directories etc..

As of friday 4-13-2001 I decided to replace the harddrive on my server with a larger hard drive. My intention was to pop the new hard drive in and initiate a DR. The DR failed at a point and a setup screen gave a message that a certain file could not be read. I called HP support and the support engineer told me there was a known issue with Stac Replica and that there was nothing he could do other than send me out new DR software (not by Stac) and that I would have to re-install Windows NT. (He didn't know at that point that my HD hadn't failed rather I was upgrading it). I am upset that HP hadn't notified me and other registered surestore customers of such a mission critical issue that they were aware of. I went out and bought Norton Ghost 2001 to allow me to upgrade the HD but I am out of luck with respect to all of my previous configurations that were backed up.

Today I spoke with an HP representative Lewis (only giving first name) regarding this issue and he asked me what I would like to see HP do about this. I explained the whole issue to him and said I would like HP to tell me how I could get my configurations off my tapes and restored. He said at that point in the conversation: "unfortunately Stac Software was out of business". He asked me again what I wanted "ultimately" from HP. I asked him to tell me what HP is willing to do to compensate me for my time wasted and loss of what was on these tapes. I explained that I was upset that HP hadn't notified owners of the drives. He said that HP didn't have a list of owners because the drives are sold through resellers. I countered that I had registered the drive and had opened a support issue regarding the drive about the time I purchased it. So HP certainly could have remedied or at least mitigated my loss by notifying me earlier. Ultimately, Lewis stated that he could give me names of companies that specialize in the retrieval of lost data but that HP wouldn't pay for this. He said that the only thing HP would do is refund the cost of the drive since it didn't perform the task it was purchased for. He stated that is all the warranty covers and that this is all HP is legally responsible to do. I'm not certain that that is indeed the case when they don't notify customers of a known issue such as this but its probably not worth pursuing further. I hope however this information helps others avoid a similar loss.