IBM LTO6 Tape Drive
 
HP LTO6 Tape Drive
 
HP LTO3 Tape Drive
 
HP LTO4 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO2 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO4 Tape Drive
 
HP LTO1 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO3 Tape Drive
 
HP LTO5 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO1 Tape Drive
 
HP LTO2 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO5 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO7 Tape Drive
 

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In this Document

Goal

Solution

References

Applies to:

Goal

HP & IBM LTO - How To Upgrade the Firmware on the HP & IBM LTO Drives Using the Tload and WinTload Utilities 

Solution

Estimated Time: 60 minutes

For the HP and IBM LTO drives customers can upgrade the firmware on their drives using the Oracle Tload and WinTload utilities.

For customers running Solaris and Linux they can use the Oracle Tload utility.

For customers running Windows they can use the Oracle WinTload utility.

The Oracle Tload and WinTload utilities are supplied in the latest Oracle Firmware Patch for the customer's drives.  These patches are available for the customers to download on My Oracle Support (MOS).

Caution:  Before a customer upgrades the firmware on their drives they need to offline the drives from the backup application so that the firmware upgrade will not affect any of their backup or restore jobs.

To install and use the Oracle Tload utility to upgrade the firmware on your LTO drives on Solaris and Linux please follow the following process:

1. Untar the tload.tar file  Example = # tar -xf tload.tar
2. The PatchName/TLOAD_Dir directory will be created
3. For Solaris Sparc in the PatchName/TLOAD_Dir/sparc directory, as root, type the "tload" command  Example = # ./tload ../../<firmware_filename> for HP LTO drives please use the firmware file with the ".E" file extension.
4. For Solaris x86 in the PatchName/TLOAD_Dir/x86 directory, as root, type the "tload" command Example = # ./tload ../../<firmware_filename>
5. For Linux in the PatchName/TLOAD_Dir/x86-linux directory, as root, type the "tload" command Example = # ./tload ../../<firmware_filename>
6. Select the tape device to be upgraded.  More than one device can be selected at a time.  A "," must separate the device numbers if they aren't sequential.  Example of selecting a single drive would be "1".  Example of selecting a number of sequential drives would be "1-4".  Example of selecting a number of drives that aren't sequential would be "1, 3, 6"  Note: It should only take 5 minutes or less per drive to upgrade the code on the drive or drives no matter how many drives you selected for the firmware upgrade.
7. During the upgrade process you might see error messages in the console window and/or the "tload" terminal window.  It is normal for a SCSI bus reset message to appear for each device that is upgraded.  If the tape drive has been recently upgraded or power cycled then you will get a failure on the first attempt to upgrade the code on that drive.  If you have a failure please retry the code load on the drive again.
8. Ensure that the device to be upgraded is the correct one and answer "y" for yes.  The default answer is No.
9. After each device has been upgraded the displayed tape device list will be refreshed.  The devices that were upgraded should now show the new firmware versions in the "Rev" field.

Note:  If you get a failure during the process please add the "-v" option immediately after the tload command for verbose mode.  An example would be ./tload -v ../../<firmware_filename>

For more detailed instructions, see the attached HP and IBM Tape Drive Firmware Upgrade Utilities pdf below in the references section.

To install and use the Oracle WinTload utility to upgrade the firmware on Windows please follow the following process:

Note: Please run the WinTload utility as "Administrator" by right clicking on the program and selecting "Run as Administrator"

1. Install WinTload by double clicking on the WinTload_3_0_Installer.msi file
2. Start the WinTload tool by either double clicking on the desktop icon or by selecting WinTload under the Windows Program Files in Windows.
3. Select the tape drive that you want to upgrade by selecting the Device number for that specific tape drive   Note: At this time WinTload will only show 12 devices.  Engineering is currently working on a fix for this.
4. Browse to the correct firmware file for the drive you want to upgrade and click on the "Open" button.  For HP LTO drives please use the firmware file with the ".E" file extension.
5. If a cartridge is in the drive the drive will eject it before starting the firmware upgrade
6. The drive will start the firmware download process
7. Once the download and upgrade are complete the drive will go through a recovery period.  The time remaining (in seconds) will be displayed down in the bottom border of the WinTload window.
8. When the recovery period is complete please click on the "OK" button to rescan the drives.
9. The drive should now reflect the new firmware version that was just upgraded on the drive.
10. If you need to upgrade other drives please follow the same process for each of those drives.

 For more detailed instructions, see the attached HP and IBM Tape Drive Firmware Upgrade Utilities pdf below in the references section.

References

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