Product

Platform

Intel

Operating system

Windows 2000

Error

Error in RSM, or event viewer, "Failed to identify media <The media identifies does not represent a valid medium>".

Symptoms

- RSM fails to identify the medium. If you click on the mount that is failing in the work queue, right click and select Properties, the description of the error says, "The media identifier does not represent a valid medium."

- The tape may get stuck in the drive with the message, "unable to unload the tape".

- The tape may appear in the \unrecognized\unknown pool. You can't write a free label on the tape. If you drag the tape from the \unrecongized\unknown pool to \free\unknown, you get the message, "the media is write-protected".

- If you drag the tape from \unrecognized\unknown to \free, it fails with the error "you need to drag to the same type of pool".

Cause

2.) During system upgrade from 1.1 to 2.0, the CreoWFSMil.dll is not installed properly.

3.) It can be the drive having problem to read the tape.

Solution

For cause 1.)

Avoid inserting a tape initialized on a higher capacity drive into a lower capacity drive. Eject the tape out from the library, or erase the tape if the tape is shown under the unrecognized pool.

If the tape is shown under the unknown pool, you cannot erase the tape using RSM. You can try dragging the tape into the backup\dlt\unknown pool and use NTbackup to erase it.

If the system is using a lower capacity drive after upgraded, the drive is backwards compatible i.e. you can use a DLT8000 drive to read a tape written on a DLT2000, 4000 or 8000, but not the other way around.

So if you have tape that was written on a higher capacity drive, after upgrading the system to connect with a lower capacity drive, the lower drive capacity WON'T be able to read the tape.

The DLT drive has to be backwards compatible. You can upgrade to a different tape device with higher capacity.

For cause 2).

1. Check the CreoWFSMll.dll to make sure you have the latest one. The current build is June 27, 2000, size = 144,384 bytes.

2. Check the setting location of this file.

3. Go to the system that is connected to the tape device.

4. Open up regedt32, locate \\Hkey_local_machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\NTMS\OMID\Tape\Creo, check the directory location of this file, and make sure it has the latest build as in step 1.

5. Go to Removable Storage Management, click Physical Location, highlight the device, click Properties, change the inventory to perform FULL, and then do the inventory again to see whether it will identify the media.

For cause 3.)

Troubleshoot the drive.

For cause 2.)

Check the drive, it could not the drive having problem to read the tape.

Permanent fix:

See also

Keywords

archiver configuration, archiver - RSM

Technical contact(s)

Amy Chan

Submitted by

Amy Chan

Date submitted

23 Aug 2001