Question: I have an External Certance LTO2 tape drive and my tape is stuck. Can you help?
Joe Admin has an External Certance LTO2 drive bought from Dell and it is out of warranty. The OS does not recognize the drive as attached at all. The drive gets power but thats about it. The red and green lights on the front of the drive continously blink.
They have accepted that the drive is dead and just want to get the backup tape out of the drive – because it contains sensitive client data.
We have had issues with these drives as well and have come to the conclusion they are very fragile. When you put the tape in do not use a lot of pressure pusing the tape in the drive. It only needs to pass a certain point and the leaders guide the tape into place. If you push too hard it damages the internal stuff and the tape gets stuck
We found a way to get the tape out! And that is without taking the drive apart (That didn’t work for us…Long story).
- Power the drive on – it does not need to be connected to a computer.
- Hold down the power button for about 30 seconds.
- If the mechanism isn’t too badly damaged the tape will spit right out!
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about 4 years ago
This worked for me!!!! i cleaned the drive after i got it out and now its working again. thanx
about 4 years ago
Yup…holding the power down does the trick.
Some LTO’s will display a red number, mine displays a 6 when it is angry, or a C when it needs to be cleaned.